


Pathetic in Love

by KnightOwl725



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Medium Burn, Most Hawkes Alive (Sans Father), Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Past Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23780137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightOwl725/pseuds/KnightOwl725
Summary: Marian Hawke, “Champion of Kirkwall” and co-owner of the new Hanged Man bar, has only one great weakness: her heart. That heart was stolen years ago by Anders Justice, nurse and ceaseless activist. After an engagement followed by endless break ups, Hawke has had enough, but she just can’t seem to let Anders go.What do you do when you’re still in love with a man that only breaks your heart? If you’re Hawke, you fall in love with the new white-haired and tattooed guy your co-owner hires so he can break your heart.
Relationships: Fenris & Female Hawke, Fenris/Female Hawke
Comments: 37
Kudos: 69





	1. Hopelessly Devoted~

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote purely for fun and self-indulgence over the course of, like, years that I'm finally ready to upload. That's right. There will be periodic updates, but it's already written. Amazing.  
> Come for the lols @ Hawke's love life, stay for the increasingly soft and warm moments between Hawke and Fenris.

There weren’t a lot of things that could take Marian Hawke down.

She’d lost her father to illness, and she’d spent her teen years helping her mother raise her younger twin siblings. She worked to keep her family alive until they were forced from their home and landed in Kirkwall. As shitty as the city was, she worked for a year just to pay off the cost of getting her family settled. They moved in with her drunkard uncle in a shitty, dirty, and dangerous part of town, and she hadn’t flinched. She’d earned the haggard scar across the bridge of her nose while protecting her family in that shit part of town. 

She hadn’t faltered when her family needed to flee, hadn’t stepped down when the thugs attacked them, hadn’t hesitated when the mayor’s son went missing, hadn’t backed down when the foreign gang called the Qunari demanded favors of her and questioned the worth of her city.  
There was really only one thing that could take Marian Hawke down, and it was her heart. 

She loved her family and friends so much, maybe too much. But that love had gotten her this far, with her family set for life in a cushy estate and a newly refurbished bar owned by her and Varric Tethras, her best friend. That love has also gotten into her current situation, with a broken heart bleeding on the bar as she spoke to Isabela.

“He called you?” Isabela asked. “That idiot called you?”

Marian sighed, slumping against the counter amidst her cleaning. “Told me he loved me, said he wanted to give us another shot. The usual.”

“You told him no, didn’t you?” The woman’s voice held a note of warning. When Hawke simply gave her a full dosage of sad puppy eyes, she cursed. “Dammit Hawke! You have to cut Anders off.”

“I know,” Marian sighed.

“Do you? Because you kept taking him back and skirting around the issue,” Isabela said. “I mean, sleep with him all you want, kitten, but it’s not just that for you. He broke your heart, and now you’re letting him play with it.”

Marian sighed yet again, slumping further onto the bar. “I just… We could be so happy if he just--”

“And that’s the problem, that ‘if’!” Isabela interrupted, brandishing a half-empty glass of whiskey at her. “He’s never going to put you first, and all the ‘ifs’ in the world won’t change that.”

Marian didn’t respond for a long moment, gazing out at the tables and the dance floor sadly. “Do you think it’s selfish of me?”

“What?” Isabela asked between drinks. 

“To ask to be number one in someone’s life like that.”

Isabela thought for a moment. “It is, and it isn’t. Anders loves his causes and his passions at the expense of his own well-being and yours. He loves you, I honestly think he does, but he’s manic in that love. And that’s not you, Hawke.”

Isabela leaned back with a smirk. “You want someone to grow old with. You want someone to bicker with about what goes in the garden this spring and who walks the dog or gets up to feed the baby. You want quiet nights reading together and drinking wine and doing silly domestic crap. That’s not Anders.”

Marian sighed yet again. “I know, it’s just… I’m just so fucked. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like a dog. Everytime he whistles, I go running.”

She pressed her face into her hands with a groan. “I’m pathetic!”

Isabela reached across the bar to pat Marian on the shoulder. “There, there, kitten. Being pathetic in love suits you.”

Marian couldn’t help a laugh, unveiling her face as she does. Then, the door creaked open, far too early for any customers.

“Oh, hello,” Isabela said under her breath. A man walked in. He was fairly short and thin, dressed in simple, worn dark clothes. His hair was stark white, and white tattoos laced across his brown skin.

He looked at them, and Marian felt her breath leave her in an instant. His eyes were a vivid green. His nose was unusual, oddly angled but strikingly handsome on his face.  
His eyes flicked between them. His hands were tightly wrapped around the strap of his messenger bag.

Marian blinked herself out of creepy-staring mode and smiled. “Fenris?”

“Fenris?” Isabela purred.

Marian waved at her dismissively. “Down, girl. He’s our new hire. You are Fenris, right?”

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was deep and gravely and gorgeous.

“I’m Hawke,” Marian said. “Varric might have mentioned me.”

There was a twitch to his lips that indicated yes, Varric definitely raved about her.

“And this--” Hawke gestured to Isabela, “--is Isabela. She’s a friend of ours.”

Fenris nodded at Isabela in greeting, unaffected by her sly grin.

“What shall I do?” Fenris asked.

“Ah, right,” Marian glanced around herself and cursed. “Shit, the bar still needs to be restocked. Did Varric show you that? Good, good. If you’ll get started on that, there’s a few things I need to file and sign and fax, then I’ll come help with the rest of the cleaning.”

“Oh!” Isabela said, standing on the bottom rung of her stool. “I’ll help stock the bar.”

Fenris moved to stand behind the bar, depositing his bag in an empty bottom cupboard. Marian walked past him, noting that he smelt like coffee and a bit like gasoline.

“Do not let Isabela behind the bar,” she called over her shoulder. “Whatever you do! Do not believe her lies!”

Fenris grumbled an acknowledgement, Isabela cried out in protest, and Marian disappeared to the little office they kept to finish her work before opening.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was so hot?” Marian demanded the next morning, Varric seated across from her at the little cafe they frequented.

He chuckled, eyes trained on his phone as he flipped through emails, notes, or Maker knows what. “I wanted you to be properly surprised.”

Marian groaned. “He’s so polite, too! I mean, he gives off some serious asshole vibes, but he was totally cordial the entire night. He didn’t complain once, even when some drunk girl tried to dance on the bar and spilled her drink on his head.”

Varric laughed in his deep, honey voice. “Aveline must have gotten a kick out of that.”

“Oh, she had a good time dragging the girl out, I think.” Marian took a sip of her morning coffee, sighing happily at the familiarity of it.

“He’s single, by the way.”

Marian glanced out the window. “I didn’t ask.”

Varric hummed.

“How do you even know that?”

He smiled at his phone. “Anyone who works for us needs to be comfortable with invasive questions.”

“So you can write friend fiction about them.”

He laughed. “Exactly!”

“Pretty sure that’s harassment,” she said, dumping the last of her coffee down her throat. “Now that we’re the boss and all.”

“It’s called taxes, Hawke,” Varric said. “Gotta get the marital status for that. And I write fiction inspired by friends. I would never write anything directly about them.”

He set down his phone and turned his full focus on her. “Besides, I knew crazy and tortured was your type, but I was curious how broad that blanket was. Will any crazy and tortured guy do? Or only the mass-murdering type?”

She rolled her eyes. “Anders never mass-murdered anyone.”

“Not yet,” Varric added. “And it seems the former is true.”

She smirked. “Assuming Fenris doesn’t have his own dark past.”

“He does have a criminal record.”

“Are you serious? We hired a con?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Half our friends--Hell, all of them except Choir Boy and Aveline--just barely avoid criminal records. His is just some theft and a few assaults. Nothing we couldn’t handle, if needed.”

She whined, “Varric.”

“He stole from some Tevinter gang lord, and the assault was on other Tevinters, so it’s practically legal anyway.”

Marian didn’t want to admit how quickly her concern dissipated. “Oh, alright. I’ll keep an eye on him, though. Just in case.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.”

She threw a croissant at his head.

For the record, Hawke hated new people.

Her people loved her. Around her friends she was witty and strong and cool and dependable and just a little quirky. With her family she was the oldest sibling, always fussing and teasing her twin siblings and giving their mother stress headaches.

But strangers? With them, Hawke was a disaster. She was uncoordinated and invasive and goofy in the uncomfortable and not endearing way.

So although she had been all for hiring a new person, she was miserable during her shifts with Fenris.

He was so damned quiet, too. Talkative and awkward she could work with. But silent? It made her nervous not having any feedback on her interaction attempts. Which made her more awkward. Which made her more nervous.

The most she got from Fenris was the infrequent eyebrow raise. Otherwise he didn't react to anything she said or did.

“Exciting plans this weekend?” She regretted the question as soon as it left her mouth. He worked at a bar - her bar. What else would he be doing but

“Working,” he said, and Hawke wished she could melt into the floor beneath her.

“Cool, cool.” Her traitor mouth kept going. “So how are you liking the city?”

He continued wiping down the tables and didn't respond for a moment. Hawke waited, feeling more and more foolish.

“It's violent and dirty,” he finally said.

Hawke shrugged. “Yeah, but it's home.”

“You're not from Kirkwall.”

“No, but who is?” Certainly not anyone she knew. “I can't think of a single person I know who is from Kirkwall, but we all call it home.”

“People are not friendly to outsiders here,” he said.

Hawke grinned. “Varric would say that's half the charm.”

“Interesting that a refugee would rise so high within the city.”

“Oh,” she muttered, turning to distract her hands with shifting some glasses. “That. Well, you pick enough fights in life and you end up dead or a hero. Then dead. Always dead eventually.”  
He grunted in acknowledgement, and silence settled over the space once more. 

Maker, how silence killed her. Why else would she surround herself with loud people people, full of life and noise and opinions that spilled from their mouths as easily as laughter. But quiet people? People who held their breath and their thoughts behind expressive eyes that Marian for the life of her could not read, they terrified her. 

Give Hawke a shouting drunkard, give her a whole room of them, and she is in her place. She knows this; she can handle this. But give her a single quiet man, clad in all black with long sleeves and white tattoos, and she felt lost. Too much time to think. Too much time to worry. Too much time to wonder what those piercing green eyes saw when they landed on her.

“You worry too much what a person thinks,” Varric once told her.

She’d scoffed, waving a glass that probably held alcohol and said, “Since when do I give a damn what people think?”

“Not people - a person,” he’d corrected, pushing his reading glasses up his nose as he scribbled in a notebook. “Put a group, even the entire damned Chantry in front of you, and you’d just as quick flip the bird as you’d wave. But throw just one person in front of you, and you’d break your own back bending over backwards to please them. You’re a person-pleaser, Hawke.”

And he was right, which was exactly why Fenris’s sudden existence in her life was throwing her entirely off-balance. 

It certainly didn’t help that the more time she wasted fretting over her relationship with a stranger-employee was time she didn’t spend agonizing over her relationship with Anders.

“So what brought you to Kirkwall?”

It was only a matter of time until her traitor mouth had to open again.

“Avoiding people,” he said simply, and Hawke wondered whether he didn’t want to talk about in general or if she was irritating him. Maybe he just didn’t have a lot to say about it?

She laughed more than was appropriate. “Yeah, same.”

Settling behind the bar, she grabbed a pair of clean glasses. “Want a drink?”

He paused in his sweeping to look up at her. Hawke sighed internally at the flash of adoration she felt upon seeing his eyes. She felt no guilt for this; she felt that way when she saw anyone with gorgeous eyes. Hell, she felt that when she saw Sebastian’s saintly eyes.

“Drinking on the job?” he asked in his deep voice, closer to a calm sort of rumble than words at times.

She shrugged. “Where’s the fun of working at a bar if you can’t drink?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. What was that, the third time he’d given her that look this week? It was a lot, considering it was Saturday and he only looked at any one person once a day.  
She poured herself a beer from tap. Her glass full, she raised her own brow to Fenris in question. He shrugged and set the broom against the wall.

Not bothering to hide her grin, Hawke poured a second beer.


	2. Time Flies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Months have passed since Fenris first walked into The Hanged Man, and that's been about all that's changed. When Sebastian visits the bar for the first time, Hawke is confronted with just how much she clings to the past.

Mondays were strictly Merrill days, at least in the afternoon. Every Monday, Hawke made time to visit Merrill in her little hippy shop, where she sold handmade candles and soaps and herbal teas among other strange books and decorations. It smelt like a medley of earthy aromas, just shy of suffocating.

Hawke liked to sit on the floor by the counter, settled into a large green bean bag that had seen better days. There she chatted with Merrill while the tiny girl flitted about the shop. At slow times, Merrill would curl into the bean bag with Hawke, and it was sort of like snuggling with a little sister, a beloved girl friend, a bunny, and a pile of bones all in one, but Hawke loved it.  
“Bela told me that Anders is back,” Merrill said casually, with her usual unaware, pleasant tone. “Will he be at this week’s game?”

Every Thursday night everyone who could make it in their group met up to play Wicked Grace, bet, drink, and catch up. Hawke and Varric were always present, come hell or highwater. Isabella and Merrill were almost always there, with Aveline and Sebastian bringing up the rear. Even Hawke’s siblings would join when they could, though the twins were busy off building their own lives these days. 

Anders used to come, but his oppressive opinions and rollercoaster of a life wore down the group until only Hawke seemed to give a shit, and even then.

“I haven’t invited him,” Hawke said. “We’re not even really together, it’s… ugh.”

Merrill left her station as the register to climb onto the bean bag with a handwoven blanket in hand. Hawke shifted to accommodate her until they were settled, legs woven together and curled up under the blanket.

“I know you’re strong, Hawke, and I know you’ll do what’s best for you,” Merrill said sweetly, cartoonishly big but still endearing eyes on Hawke, “but I hope you dump him.”

Hawke laughed.

“He’s just not always so nice to people, and I think you deserve someone who loves you. Like, really loves you.”

Hawke couldn’t help a smile even as she disagreed. “Anders loves me in his own way.”

Merrill pressed her lips together, cheeks puffing out. “Well, he isn’t very good at it. Not like you are. What would you say if I was the one dating Anders?”

Hawke frowned. She didn’t want to imagine it; she already knew what she’d think.

“You wouldn’t like him very much,” Merrill said for her. “Same for Bela, or Aveline, or Varric. Not Sebastian so much, because he’s married to the Maker, I think? But you love us, and you wouldn’t want us to be with someone who doesn’t love us a whole lot. I just think you should look at yourself like you look at us, maybe, and think, if you were Hawke’s friend, would you want Hawke to be with Anders?”

“Merrill,” Hawke cooed, squeezing the smaller girl until she squeaked in laughter. “Thank you. I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask,” she said with a bright smile. “Let’s talk about something happier. Did you see my new tapestry?”

Hawke fucking loved to see Sebastian at the bar. Nothing like a holy man, dressed in pressed clothing with slicked back hair a serene smile sitting across from her on a barstool. She also loved seeing Fenris frown at him. Fenris frowned by default, but she found a sadistic sort of amusement in seeing things that made him truly frown, brows scrunching together, forehead wrinkling, mouth turning sharply down. He wasn’t angry, at least she didn’t think so, but he was the tiniest bit annoyed, or maybe offput, maybe uncomfortable. Probably the last option, she guessed, at least this time.

Fenris continued working around Sebastian, taking inventory, cleaning glasses, sweeping the floor, and shooting narrowed glances at Sebastian as he spoke with Hawke.

“How’s the Chantry?” Hawke asked with a lopsided grin. “Corrupt as ever?”

He chuckled softly. “It’s been too long, Hawke.”

She leaned on the bar, crossing her arms to support herself. “What’s kept you from visiting us? Her Highliness or whatever keeping you busy?”

He sighed a little, but was still smiling over his glass of water. “Well, you could say that. I never pretended it would be easy, but we cannot abandon the Chantry, especially with the turmoil our world is in. People need the Chant.”

“What people need is for the Chantry to clean up its act.”

“And what better than for the change you want to come from the inside?”

She made a face, drawing another laugh from him.

“Enough of arguing,” Hawke said. “I’m sure you get enough of that these days.”

“Yes, too much even,” he said. “How are you, Hawke? Your family well?”

She sighed, pushing off from the counter. “You probably see more of Carver than I do, with his training at the Chantry. Bethany is keeping busy with her studies, making friends, all that college stuff. And my mother is well, settling back into the estate.”

“Have you moved in yet?”

She made a face. “No, much to her dismay. I don’t know, can’t sleep well in that place. I like my own space, thank you. Did move out of that run down place into a nicer apartment nearby, so there’s that. And, of course, you’ve met the bar.”

She took a step back and spread her arms to indicate the space. Sebastian’s smile widened, and he turned on his stool to look at the place a second time.

“It is something,” he said in a complimentary tone as he turned back to face her. “I’m very proud of you, Hawke. You’ve left a mark on this city, earned a place for yourself and those you love, and yet you still live far from your family’s estate and run a bar. You haven’t let this city change you, for all it has tried.”

She shrugged. “Could just call me stubborn and be done with it.”

He laughed. “Yes, stubborn, but also stalwhart and loyal, not only to your loved ones but to yourself as well.”

She smiled, but a thread of guilt spread into her chest as the memory of last night flashed in her mind. Anders in her apartment, talking over dinner and wine. He’d complained about the wine - didn’t care for it, and it reminded her of what Isabela said. But she’d let him stay, and now she felt the mark on her shoulder burning through her sleeves. If Sebastian knew she’d let Anders back into her life again, he wouldn’t speak so highly of her.

She shouldn’t have let herself feel the guilt; Chantry mothers and brothers could smell it on a person.

“You know, Isabela has kept me updated on certain things in her text messages.”

“There’s a word for what she sends you, and it isn’t ‘text’,” Hawke teased, drawing a light blush and a laugh from him. She knew that wasn’t true. Or it was, but Isabela’s often inappropriate texts to him were no worse than those she sent everybody she knew. 

When he finished laughing, he smiled serenely at her once more and said, “I heard something about Anders?”

If Varric hated Anders, then Sebastian despised him. The two couldn’t agree on the color of the sky on a cloudless day, but Sebastian had given up on reasoning with the man. Something Hawke could stand to do herself.

“Fenris,” Hawke called. “How’s that, er, table...doing?”

Sebastian chuckled quietly to himself as Fenris raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s…filthy? I’m cleaning it now.”

“Good, good,” she said quickly.

“You’re avoiding the topic, Hawke,” Sebastian said, voice lilting in amusement.

She scoffed. “What? No, of course not. I just don’t want to make Fenris uncomfortable! Who wants to hear about their boss’s tragic love life? No one!”

“Fenris, correct?” Sebastian asked, turning to face the other man. Hawke had briefly introduced them when Sebastian walked in, emphasis on brief.

Fenris nodded, focus on the table as if he could scrub hard enough to get the two idiots pestering him to vanish. Then he paused to look at them.

“Forgive me, Fenris, but you’ve been working here for some time now?”

“How would you know that?” Hawke demanded.

“Isabela,” he answered simply.

“A few months,” Fenris answered. 

“You started back in… Huh. It’s been almost six months,” Hawke mused. “We should throw a party!”

“No,” Fenris said quickly. “That’s, uh, not necessary.”

“Maybe just a small bonus then,” Hawke murmured, half to herself.

“As I was saying,” Sebastian said, eyes on Fenris. “Surely by now you’ve heard more than you care to about Hawke and company? From Varric at the least, and even moreso from Isabela and Merrill if you’ve met the latter.”

“I…” Fenris’s eyes flicked to Hawke. “Other’s personal business doesn’t interest me.”

“Ugh!” Hawke cried, flopping onto the counter. “He knows! He knows everything! Damn Varric and his friend fiction! And Isabela and her...her mouth!”

“So, about Anders,” Sebastian said as he shifted to face her once more.

“Fenris, save me,” she whined weakly, looking up at him through the hair in her eyes.

She swore she saw a tinge of a smirk on the bastard as he said, “We all must sleep in the beds we make, Hawke.”

“Traitor!” she cried, jolting upright as Sebastian laughed. 

“Focus, Hawke,” Sebastian said, and, begrudgingly, she obliged. “Now, why did you accept him back into your life?”

“Because I’m pathetic?” she offered, slumping back onto the counter.

“You are far from pathetic, Hawke. We all fall victim to love and loneliness at times. Tell me, why do you believe you keep going back to a man who keeps you in his back pocket?”

“When did I hire a therapist?” she demanded.

“Hawke.”

She groaned. “I don’t know, Seb. Maybe I’m lonely? Definitely in love. The sad kind, where you stand in the rain outside a door except no one answers.”

“You have many friends, a lively business, and a loving family here for you. Why might you be feeling lonely? Do you feel the need to have a man in your life?”

“I don’t need no man,” Hawke muttered, earning a stern look from Sebastian and a strange cough from Fenris that might have been a laugh, but he had turned his back to them as he worked.

She sighed and said, “No, I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t know. Carver acts like he hates me, Bethany is too busy and too far away for me, and Mom won’t stop guilting me about being single and childless. She wants grandchildren, Sebastian! Why must her eldest daughter deny her life’s greatest joy! The cruelty!” 

“Don’t forget the family you’ve built for yourself among your friends, Hawke. We all grow apart, especially siblings over time, but although that change can be painful, it is growth.”

“I just miss the old days, the five of us on the farm. Sometimes I even miss living with Gamlen in his shithole, all tripping over each other and plotting each other’s deaths in frustration. It was nice...kinda. Maybe I just like living with others. But the estate is too big, and the twins won’t let me bunk with them.”

Sebastian chuckled. “You should give yourself more credit, Hawke. You are not pathetic; you simply long for a family that has grown and changed and experienced loss. Do not berate yourself for missing those closer times, but do not forget to be grateful for the closeness you have now.”

A buzz sounded, causing Sebastian to twitch. He pulled a sleek phone from his pocket and frowned at it - the first frown Hawke had seen on him today.

“The Maker calling you?”

He tapped on the screen for a few moments, then slid it back into his pocket. “I’m afraid someone is certainly calling. I’ll be sure to visit more often Hawke. I think it would benefit me even more than you.”

She laughed, stepping around the bar to hug him. 

“It was a pleasure meeting you Fenris,” he said before he left, offering a hand to the man. Fenris hesitated, then shook it, the white tattoos on the back of his hands stark against his skin. “If you ever need assistance, guidance, or just a friendly face, you can find me at the Chantry.”  
“Oooh, you can confess to Sebastian!” Hawke teased. 

He turned his most serene and pleasant smile on her. “And when was the last time you visited the Chantry, Miss Hawke?”

“Probably when I saved the city,” she shot back, and he grinned.

“Fair enough. I will see you soon.”

Quietly he stepped outside, off towards the Chantry with his Andraste belt and nagging Chantry mothers. 

“He’s all put together now, but you should have seen him a few years back,” Hawke said, remembering the rage-filled prince slash Chantry brother, waist-deep in guilt and anger and confusion. She remembered why, and her voice softened. “But I’m happy for him. We all are, though we like to tease.”

He grunted in acknowledgement and went back to work.


	3. The Little Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke prepares to honor her family's only employees, featuring a Leandra cameo, Fenris being dodgy, and Hawke mothering.

When Hawke broached the subject of some kind of six-month celebration with Varric, his first thoughts were on par with her own.

“We can close the bar one weeknight and have a party,” he offered, tapping his chin in thought, a glimmer of excitement filling his eyes. There were few things Varric loved more than a good party. 

“He vetoed that idea immediately,” Hawke said with a sigh, resting her cheek in one hand. “Probably would not appreciate the attention anyways. I thought maybe we could give him a nice bonus. I don’t know, what’s appropriate for an employee? I’ve never had one.”

“What about Orana?” Varric asked.

Hawke pictured the meek, pale-haired girl and the less-than-legal job that had sent her to a slaver’s cavern. Most of the slaves were local and rushed home upon being freed, but not Orana. She’d come all the way from Tevinter, born into slavery and immediately seeking a new master. Hawke had just reacquired the estate, and she’d sent the girl there in the meantime. Now Orana was paid to keep the estate in order and tend to Madame Hawke. It had been nearly two years since then, and every time Hawke visited, she felt a spark of pride for the young woman’s growing independence and Hawke-like tenacity. 

“Maker!” Hawke cried. “Here I am thinking of Fenris’s six-month workiversary, and Orana’s two year workiversary is soon. I think. When did we meet her? It was March, wasn’t it?”

Varric hummed to himself in thought, then pulled out his beloved phone. Flipping through it for a moment, he paused and announced, “March it was. It’s been two years already? We should definitely throw her a party!”

Hawke sighed. “I don’t think she’d like that much either. Mother tried to give her a day off a few months back, and the poor woman nearly had a panic attack.”

Varric shrugged. “Baby steps. We’ll get her slacking off someday.”

“Here’s hoping,” Hawke muttered. “But maybe I can pick her up a few nice things. A good bonus, a nice family dinner. Probably just me and Mother, but she doesn’t know the twins too well anyway.”

“So you take care of Orana, and I’ll take care of Fenris.”

“No party!” she insisted.

Varric nodded severely. “I swear it on my life.”

~~

“Two years, Mother!” Hawke cried over the phone amidst the high-end shopping center, torn jeans and messy hair drawing as many stares at her loud talking. “Can you believe it? Seems like yesterday we found her in a cavern. She called me ‘Master’, and now she’s lecturing you about your health. I love it.”

Leandra Hawke chuckled on the other line, having quietly extracted herself from the house to wander the garden away from Orana. “She certainly has grown so much, hasn’t she? I’m so glad for her. You know, the Driskal family was here just last week, and they were so jealous of us having Orana here! They tried to bribe me to let her work for them!”

“What is this, Tevinter?” Hawke cried, drawing another round of stares. She didn’t notice, instead peering into a fancy clothing shop’s window. Would Orana like a nice scarf or jewlery? She was a practical woman, but maybe she’d like a little something fancy?

“I know, I know,” her mother agreed. “But I told them, ‘Orana is family. She’s the one you’ll want to speak to if you want her to work for you instead.’ But I was so worried she would leave! I don’t trust those Driskals - there’s a reason their servants always look so tired! I told Orana she was welcome to find another job if she wanted, and she was so upset with me! It’s good that her two year anniversary is coming up; I don’t want her to think we want her gone!”

Hawke hummed in agreement. “Do you think she’d like a scarf? Or maybe jewelry?”

“No, no, I got her a lovely little bracelet for Christmas - nice silver with a few small gemstones, nothing too ostentatious, and she was horrified! Maybe in a few more years, but look at decorations for her. She loves hanging things on the walls in her room. You know, we were at the market last week, and I think she likes that new tapestry trend. Hanging fabrics on the wall? Or maybe get her a nice, fluffy blanket for her room. She has a good bed set, but she’s so thin. She must get cold!”

Hawke chuckled. “Alright, good ideas.”

“Let me know if you need any more suggestions, and I’ll take care of dinner. Just be here by four tomorrow so you can finish up while I distract her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The two said their farewells, and Hawke dumped the phone back into her pocket. She found a large, up-scale furniture store at one end of the shopping center, where she purchased an enormous blanket the thickness of three lesser blankets and a small hawk figurine. The tapestry she could find at Merrill’s shop.

~~

Later that afternoon, gifts purchased and sitting on the bar of the Hanged Man, Hawke stood fighting with tape and wrapping paper and scissors.

The doors to the bar creaked open, far too quiet to be Varric. Hawke looked up, fingers tangled in tape and paper to see Fenris, in his usual all black and carrying a duffel bag.

He froze briefly at the sight of her. “Ah… You're...early.”

“Varric and I have a meeting,” she said, turning her focus back to untangling.

“Right,” he muttered. He gestured awkwardly to the door behind the bar that led to their little office and an employee only bathroom. “Varric said I could use the, uh, shower before work.”  
Hawke nodded without looking up. Briefly recalling the days when the Hawkes lived in the Lower City slums with her uncle in a one bedroom pit and no shower. She took pride in their employee bathroom, kept clean with a functioning toilet, a sink, one of those air hand dryers, and a small shower. She didn't need those things like she used to with her amenity rich apartment - washer and dryer included! - but she’d found use for them herself more than once.  
Fenris shuffled past her with his bag, and moments later she heard the shower running faintly through the walls, followed some minutes later by the hand dryer. 

Hawke was still struggling when he returned, attempting to tape wrapping paper to the enormous blanket. She could have just bought some bags and tissue paper, but where was the personal touch in that?

“What are you doing?” came Fenris’s soft, deep voice.

Hawke looked up, puffing a strand of hair from her eyes and releasing the gift, sighing when the paper separated and fell apart without her holding it together. She noticed he was wearing the same clothes, and a spark of concern hit her gut. Was he doing okay? They were paying him enough, right? Varric handled the money generally, but she trusted him not to screw anyone over. 

“I’m trying to wrap these dumb gifts,” she said. “I need to have them done by tomorrow, and I’m hopeless, Fenris, hopeless!”

He cocked his head at the gifts. “You want to wrap a blanket?”

“Yes!” she cried. “Gift bags are impersonal and lazy! Where’s the effort? Where’s the love?”  
“May I?” he asked, effectively ignoring her outburst. 

“Be my guest,” she said, stepping back. He took her place, deftly clearing away the tape and paper she’d ruined and starting anew. She watched in silence as he worked, hands moving deftly, folding, taping, folding again. In a matter of moments, he spun the gift around to apply the last stretch of tape. Where Hawke would have stopped, he instead reached for a roll of sparkling gold ribbon she’d bought in a fit of misplaced ambition. In quick, fluid movements he wrapped the gift in a ribbon like a Satinalia present, leaving a perfect, plump bow in the center.

“Is that sufficient?”

Hawke gaped, starry-eyed. “It looks fucking awesome! How did you do that?”

Fenris shrugged, eyes sliding back to the gift and away from her. He shifted the blanket aside and started on the figurine, which Hawk had managed to secure inside a paper box and tape shut. “I worked at a mall once during Satinalia, when I was a teenager. We offered wrapping services. I guess I still remember how.”

Hawke marveled at the new information and the gift, which took even less time to wrap. The tapestry was already wrapped in mismatched green paper by Merrill. He took hold of that gift, tilting it slightly to see the small tears and excess corners left by the girl.

“For the record, Merrill did that one, not me,” Hawke said. “Maybe re-do that one, if you don’t mind. Just don’t tell Merrill.”

He did so quickly, tearing off the paper in one, swift move and rewrapping the tapestry. When he finished, Hawke beamed at him.

“Thanks Fen, I appreciate it,” she said. “Orana will be so impressed; she’ll know I didn’t wrap these for sure!”

She laughed.

“Orana?” Fenris repeated.

Hawke carefully collected the gifts and set them safely in a cabinet under the bar. “Yes, she works for my family at my mother’s house. Helps with chores and cooking and whatnot. She’s from Tevinter, too! Though not in a good way, I guess…”

“She’s a slave?” His voice went cold as he spoke, each careful word on the brink of seething.

Hawke flashed him a frown as she closed the cabinet. Then, she gasped. “Oh, Maker, no! We didn’t, didn’t order her or anything! We freed her, sort of. A couple years back me and Varric and Aveline went and fought some slavers holed up outside of town. Varric tells the story better, but she was there. Brand new to Kirkwall and really scared, so I gave her a job. We pay her.”

She gestured to the remaining wrapping paper. “These are for her two-year workiversary with us. We’re making her dinner.”

He nodded, looking away. “I see. I apologize.”

“No, no, I mean, I would’ve felt the same. Maker, no, she’s a worker, yeah, but well-paid and well-loved. But, uh, thank you for helping.”

He nodded, brushing his hair out of his eyes. Hawke frowned at the sight. His hair had grown pretty quickly.

“Hair getting a little out of hand?” she asked, then suddenly brightened. “I could cut it for you!”  
He raised a brow at her.

“No, really! I used to cut my brother Carver’s hair all the time. Just trim it, that is, nothing fancy.”  
Hawke brandished the scissors. Fenris took a step back, then retreated from behind the bar saying, “No, thank you.”

“Aw, come on, Fenris,” Hawke teased, following him with the scissors in hand. “You scratch my back, I cut your hair. That’s the saying, isn’t it?”

“Hawke, no.”

She laughed, and he sped up until she was chasing him around tables and stools.

“Hawke!” he cried, and suddenly he stopped, spinning around to face her. She ran into him, but he held his ground. She caught her breath amidst her laughter and found herself face-to-face with the man.

The problem with this was that Fenris was Hawke’s height almost exactly, maybe a little shorter. So when she was chest-to-chest with him, she was staring directly into his bright green eyes. The breath she tried to catch left in all at once, and she felt her face flush. A hand wretched the closed scissors from her grasp by the dull blade.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Fenris said simply, stepping away to put the scissors back onto the bar.

Hawke grasped her chest. “Maker, Fenris! My heart nearly stopped!”

“It could have if you’d fallen with those.”

“No, your eyes!”

Fenris paused and faced her, frowning in question. Hawke, with her inability to hold back anything, kept talking. “They’re so beautiful! Handsome man like you with eyes like that! Gonna stop a heart if you’re not careful.”

She was half-teasing, enjoying the sudden flush to his face as he coughed into his fist and avoided her eyes. “I wouldn’t say…”

The door swung open again, much wider and banging against the wall a little. Varric strode inside, a small, curious smile forming when he saw Fenris’s blushing state.

“What happened here? Why’s Broody turning red?”

“His eyes are beautiful, aren’t they Varric?”

“Breathtaking,” Varric said without question nor reserve. 

“Would you say he’s handsome?”

“Of course. And you should hear the words Bela uses.”

Hawke laughed. Fenris turned away from them to busy himself at the bar. “You two are ridiculous.”

“Hey,” Varric began, “a man’s gotta know his worth, his strengths. Do you think I got this far by being humble.”

“Maker, anything but being humble!” Hawke cried, for effect.

“Exactly.”

“Don’t you two have a meeting to get to?” Fenris asked, recovered enough to glare.

“Ah yes, Madam Hawke, would you join me in our tiny office to discuss figures and such?” Varric bowed to Hawke.

She mimicked his bow. “Oh, yes, of course Sir Tethras. Let us talking this boring nonsense over a bottle of our finest whiskey.”

Arm-in-arm the two skipped to the back door, Hawke snatching the bottle of whiskey Fenris held out as they passed.


	4. One Step Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Busy with work and friends and celebrations, Hawke has finally taken Anders out of the center of her life. That is, until he's standing right before her.

“And so Orana’s celebration is on track and running smoothly,” Hawke concluded over her glass of whiskey, having recounted the story of the Orana preparation.

Varric nodded solemnly. “Perfect. I’ve got three fine bottles of Orlesian wine for Fenris.”

Hawke frowned, shifting to sit upright in her seat. “Wine? What about money? Varric, I’m worried about him. He came here to shower, and I don’t know how many outfits he has. It’s hard to say. They’re always black.”

Varric sighed. “Hawke, you’re a giver. You don’t understand that some people are not takers. Like Orana and expensive jewels. She can’t accept them, no matter how much she may like or need them.”

“Orana doesn’t need jewels, no one does. Except maybe Orlesians.”

“Hawke,” Varric admonished. “Fenris is a prideful man. We pay him fair and split tips, and he’s got no complaints. But start handing him chunks of money for no reason? It’s a bit offensive, Hawke.”

“Just until he’s on his feet?” Hawke offered. “What if he’s not eating well? I remember what that’s like, and I don’t want anyone to go through that, much less someone on my payroll!”

“He’s eating, he’s eating,” Varric assured her. “I’m keeping an eye on him. I pry more than you, so he tells me a bit more. I know he’s trying to find a decent place to stay, so he’s paying more than he should for some shit motel right now, so he’s squeaking by for the time being.”

“You should tell him about my old place, then,” Hawke suggested, relaxing back into her seat. “There’s always vacancies in that dump. And it’s cheap and not too far from here.”

Varric nodded. “Good idea. I’ll let him know, subtle-like. What I do know, is that he has a taste for good wine. Don’t know why, but he’s a fan. Like you, except he actually knows good wine from grape juice.”

“Well forgive me for having a wide range of tastes. But if you think wine makes a better six month workiversary gift, then wine it is.”

~~

They gave him the gift after they closed, setting it on the bar when he went to get his bag to leave.

“What’s this?” Fenris asked once he returned, moreso at the expectant grin on Hawke’s face and Varric’s too-attentive stare than anything else.

“Happy six month workiversary!” Hawke said, unleashing a little party popper, confetti spattered across the bar. “You, uh, don’t have to clean that up.”

Varric chuckled, then said, “We wanted to get you a little something to commemorate half a year with us. Maker knows you’ve earned it, putting up with Hawke almost daily.”

Hawke punched him in the arm, earning an alarmed cry from the man.

Fenris stepped closer to the wine, picked up each bottle one-by-one and examining the labels. He nodded and hummed a little at each one. The last one caused his brows to raise.

“I have it on good authority that you’ll enjoy these,” Varric said, arms crossed as he smiled.  
“They are...too generous,” Fenris said. 

“Oh, come on, Fen!” Hawke cried. “Don’t waffle with us! Just take the gifts! You’re part of the family now, and you’re going to have to get used to it!”

“Aw,” Varric cooed. “Don’t upset Mama Hawke, now.”

Fenris chuckled, a little red. “Very well. I… Thank you.”

“Have a good night Broody,” Varric said as Fenris carefully packed the bottles in his bag. “We’ll see you Friday.”

Fenris nodded farewell, as he had Thursdays to himself, and disappeared out the door.  
“I think that went well,” Varric said.

“He seemed really touched,” Hawke said. When Varric shot her a confused look, she added, “I mean, for him.”

“Are you becoming fluent in Fenris?” Varric laughed.

“We can all aspire to something!”

~~

Orana cried at her dinner, quiet tears streaming down her face. That weekend, Leandra called Hawke to tell her how Orana had the tapestry hung up all nicely in her room.

Hawke hung up and continued her walk, hands jammed in her pockets as she stared lazily about without really looking.

Her father had raised them to be good people, to care for their family first, but to help others with everything they had in them. He had been helping others when he first got sick. He had been helping others when the doctors begged him to let his body rest. 

Carver blamed their father’s charity for his own death, and he carried it with him like a sack of bricks over his shoulder. Bethany shrugged it off, but deep inside she carried her own scars at the loss. They both learned the hard way what giving your all to others could cost you.

But Hawke, Marian Hawke, couldn’t bring herself to feel that way. Her father had died of an illness. Sure, his insistence on working on building those houses and helping folks didn’t help, but who was to say he wouldn’t have died anyway? At least he lived until the very end, fought until the very end.

Hawke thought of Anders, of his burning eyes and rough hands. He had the hands of a healer and a heart made of fire. He reminded her of her father. Like Malcolm Hawke, Anders didn’t know when to save himself. And the people who loved him suffered for it.

How many close calls had there been over the years for Hawke? How many times had helping almost cost her everything? How many times did she go out and do it all again, knowing exactly what was at risk?

Like her father, she couldn’t turn someone away when she could help. But unlike Anders, she knew where her passion to help ended and where she began. At least, she hoped she did.

She came upon the coffee shop not terribly far from the bar nor her apartment, A Cold Brew Away. Inside was warm, soft chatter of a Sunday afternoon and the ever-intoxicating smell of coffee.

Hawke took a deep breath, breathing it all in, then stopped. Seated in the far corner in a shadowed, curved booth was Fenris. Dressed in all black, only visible because his hair gave him away, reading a book and drinking coffee.

She was next in line. She quickly ordered her coffee, then went straight for the booth. Some part of her mind called out that he probably wanted to be alone, but it came too late. She was already at the booth with words spilling from her overactive mouth.

“Fenris! Fancy seeing you here, handsome!”

She wasn’t sure where her comfort with complimenting Fenris came from. She didn’t seem to realize that she was, you know, his boss. She did, however, realize that he knew far too much about her love life, which made him safe from ever being apart of it. And the compliments seemed to please him, if embarrass him a little.

She thought she saw the faintest flush to his cheeks as he looked up at her, watching her sit across from him. “Hello, Hawke.”

She signed, slipping off her bag and resting her face in her hands on the table. “Has anyone ever told you how dreamy your voice is, Fenris?”

He cleared his throat, but he was definitely blushing. “I, uh. None so frequently as you, Hawke.”

“Oh!” she said, startling at the realization. “Maker, Fen, I hope I don’t bother you. I don’t meant to be a creep - I just… Don’t think, at all, it seems. I…”

She felt herself rambling as she was hit with all the things she said to him that, while not blatantly inappropriate, were certainly not professional.

He chuckled, more openly and relaxed than usual, and said, “It’s alright. To have a beautiful woman be so generous with compliments is...flattering, to say the least.”

“I’m sorry, I’m a what now?” she asked, unable to stop the smile on her lips.

“I doubt it needs repeating.”

“Hawk?” a barista cried. “With an ‘e’? Hawk with an ‘e’?”

“Ah!” Hawke cried, leaping to her feet. “That’s me!”

She fetched her drink and hurried back, just in time to see Fenris trying to hide another laugh. “What? Reading something funny?”

He shook his head, still smiling softly, but did not explain.

Hawke would have pried - it was what she did best - but she was momentarily distracted by how wonderful it was to see Fenris smile. He did so rarely, but he seemed more and more relaxed each day that passed at the bar. He had moved into her old complex, or so she heard. But he wore different clothes, all black mostly, but clean and whole. He’d even gained a little weight, which was a relief.

He seemed...happy. And that made Hawke’s heart hurt with pride at how far he’d come in such little time. 

“You’re staring, Hawke,” Fenris observed. He put a dried leaf in the book to mark his place and set it aside to mimic Hawke’s body language across from her, hands up and supporting his head. Frankly, it was the greatest compliment she’d ever received.

She gave him a little wink, which made him roll his eyes and fight off a smile. “If you must know, I was thinking how happy I am to see you’re doing so well. I mean, I can’t say I know everything about your very mysterious, very secretive life, but what I do know is good. And I’m happy for you, Fenris.”

He blinked at her, bright green eyes wide.

“I see,” he said, pulled his arms off the table onto his lap.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, I…” He cleared his throat. “Your support is appreciated, Hawke. I’m simply...not accustomed to it. Not without strings.”

She grinned. “Well, well. There are strings aplenty tied to my unconditional support.”

He raised a skeptical eyebrow at her as she listed them on her fingers.

“First, I will pester you about your personal life, hobbies and the like. Second, I will force you to endure my amazing jokes. Third, Varric will write friend fiction about you. It is, in fact, a stipulation for both of us.”

“So I’ve gathered,” he mused.

She leaned in eagerly. “Did you read his latest piece about Aveline and that cop?”

“Officer Donnic?” Fenris asked. “She’s been at Varric’s throat since she saw it.”

“I think they’re rather cute together,” Hawke said. “Or, I would if Aveline wasn’t too awkward to even stand near him.”

“Being too awkward never stopped you,” Fenris said in his usual, flat delivery. Hawke laughed.  
“Hawke?” called an all-too-familiar voice.

Hawke’s laughter died instantly as she and Fenris turned to see a blonde man approach the booth. 

It had been three months since she’d last spoken to Anders, their longest break yet. It helped that she hadn’t responded to the twenty texts or twelve calls or nine voicemails he’d sent her in that time. 

Hawke hadn’t exactly decided to finally stop this game with Anders. It had just sort of happened. He’d stopped responding to her, as he usually did, but she didn’t respond to him when he suddenly did. She’d seen the message, but she’d been busy. And then she’d forgotten. And then he sent another, and she forgot that one, too. And then he’d sent a third, and it was suddenly much easier to ignore it on purpose.

And that was how she’d made it three months, by taking it one message at a time without trying to tell herself that this was the time.

And now he was here, looking very intently at Fenris with suspicion filling his eyes and replacing itself with anger.

“Anders!” Hawke said, forcing a much happier voice than she’d intended. Did Fenris know that Anders was, well, That Guy everyone had talked about? Did he remember?

The deep frown and mistrusting look said...Well, it was Fenris. That said absolutely nothing unusual.

“What are you doing here?” Anders asked.

She looked about, confused by his accusatory tone. “Drinking...coffee? It is a coffee shop, isn’t it? Did I wander into a wormhole where there once was a coffee shop?”

“Hawke,” Anders warned.

She laughed awkwardly, pointedly not looking at Fenris so she didn’t have to see his reaction to this...disaster. “What? I’m only teasing you, Anders. You look so severe! What brings you here? How are you?”

“You would know if you responded to any of my messages,” he said quickly.

“Uuuhhhh…” She drew out the noise, as if time alone would save her. “I guess that’s fair. Well.”  
It seemed impossible to avoid, so she gestured to Fenris. “I’m sure you’ve noticed my friend here. This is Fenris. He works at the bar. Fenris, this is Anders. He’s an old friend.”

“Mm-hmm,” Fenris said, nodding curtly at Anders.

“Charming,” Anders muttered.

“I just knew you two’d hit it off,” she said.

“Hawke,” Anders said again, just as severe as the last time. “We need to talk.”

A million strings of words passed through her mind.

Oh, do we now?

Because now you’re ready to talk?

No, we don’t. 

Fuck off.

It felt strange to feel anger towards Anders. All these years it had been love, pain, pity, longing, sadness, and more, but never truly anger. 

But she was frozen. If she bit back at Anders, she would leave Fenris in a terribly awkward situation. He’d already seen enough of her personal life for one lifetime. Besides, he didn’t deserve to be witness to this. 

But if she agreed and went off to talk with Anders, what would happen? Would she give in again? Would her anger lead to yelling, yelling lead to crying, crying lead to them back at her apartment?

“We’re actually running late for the bar,” Fenris said, the absolute angel. “The investor meeting, Hawke.”

She cursed vividly as she looked at the time on her phone. “We can’t be late to this!”

She and Fenris quickly gathered their things, and she lightly pushed past Anders to stand.  
“Sorry, Anders, but I really can’t waste another minute or we might lose these guys,” she said quickly. “We’ll talk later, yeah?”

She patted him on the shoulder and fled the coffee shop, Fenris at her heels.

They made it a few blocks away before they stopped, breathing heavily from the show they made of their retreat.

“You’re an angel,” Hawke told Fenris as they leaned again the exterior of a bookstore. “Fuck, do I owe you.”

“That’s the guy, isn’t it?” he said, regaining his composure much faster than her. 

She let loose one last sigh, but stayed half-slumped against the store. “Yeah…”

Fenris hummed, taking a sip from the drink he’d taken with him. Didn’t look like coffee, maybe he was a tea guy? “Not what I expected.”

“Not what you expected?” Hawke repeated. “How so?”

He shrugged. “Thought he’d be attractive.”

She couldn’t help her obnoxious laugh from unleashing at the murmured comment. Fenris regarded her episode with a bemused and slightly pleased expression at his little joke.

“Oh, Fenris, you don’t understand,” she said. “We met, well, not long after I met Varric and the whole group really. I was young…er and wild…er and trying to help my family and trying to heal and stuck in this awful city and he was a doctor working out of a back alley clinic, saving lives who couldn’t afford his help, and he cared about things and went to rallies and you’d have to see his eyes when he turns on the charm to really see it.”

“You and eyes,” he murmured, looking away.

She sighed again. “I just like a good pair of eyes. Not always an attraction thing.”

He grunted in acknowledgment. 

“Is there anything that gets to you? In partners and stuff?” she asked. She wasn’t completely certain in that Fenris hadn’t outright confirmed it, but word among the group was that he was bi, so she erred on the side of caution there.

She didn’t expect him to answer. It was a pretty personal question by his standards, so she was shocked to see him seriously consider the question.

“I can’t say,” he finally answered. “I haven’t exactly had a good track record with dating.”

“You haven’t?” she prompted.

He shook his head, but said no more, not looking at her. She left it there, feeling like she’d already gotten more information than she would have ever expected.

“Thank you, though,” she said. “For saving me back there. I didn’t want to make a scene, but if I’d actually talked to him… I don’t know how that might have ended.”

“It was nothing. I know… Some people keep pulling you back in, even when you don’t want to be pulled.”

It seemed Fenris understood her more than she had thought. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, both thoughtful and touched by how much he had revealed about himself in those few moments. 

“He’s not all bad,” she said without really thinking.

“I used to think that, too.”

Fenris turned his head to meet her eyes when he said that, and countless questions flooded her tongue. But she didn’t ask any of them. She simply met his gaze in a quiet moment of understanding. 

Hawk finally stood upright, brushing off her clothes before facing Fenris fully. “I’m glad to know you, Fen.”

He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, and she wasn’t bothered by it.

“Ugh!” she grumbled. “I’d hug you right now, but I know that isn’t really your thing. So I’m mentally sending you all the love and acceptance and warmth of a hug.”

A little flustered, Fenris laughed. “Thank you, Hawke.”

“You’re coming to Wicked Grace again this week?” she asked hopefully. “Merrill was telling me how nice it was for her to meet you there, even if you didn’t like her endless questions.”

“It was a little overwhelming,” he said. “She is…excitable. But I do intend on going.”

“Great!” Hawke beamed at him, and he glanced towards the ground. “I’ll see you there, then?”  
He nodded, but when she turned away, she heard him say, “Hawke!”

She turned back, and he stuck out his hand, his other arm folded over his front. Hawke grinned again, reaching out to give him a firm handshake. She resisted any urge to pull him in for a proper hug with ease, but she did hold his hand a little too long before letting go and leaving.

Fenris at least, didn’t seem to mind.


	5. Maybe This Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her almost-confrontation with Anders, Hawke is fully prepared to continue ignoring him and try once again to move on. But Anders isn't, and she's faced with one, last chance to turn around.

Having Fenris join their weekly game was a breath of fresh air, even if he was teased for being stuffy. Merrill began lessening her onslaught of questions and comments, well-intentioned as they were, at Fenris. Hawke took to giving him a light jab or kick, depending on where they sat, when he reacted a little too harshly to Merrill. 

Beyond that bump, he melded in naturally with the group. Isabela draped herself on him regularly. He learned the game quickly, his stone-faced expression beating out even Varric at times. He and Aveline developed a friendship of mutual respect, as did he and Sebastian. 

It warmed Hawke’s heart to bring in someone new to their group, and to see Fenris begin to settle in. He was still guarded, still incredibly private. She’d told no one, not even Varric, of what she and Fenris had talked about, though she did tell everyone about their run-in with Anders.

That was a few weeks passed, and she had easily ignored Anders’ second wave of attempts to reach her. She knew the adult thing to do would be to finally sit down with him and end things properly, and for good. But still she feared what she might do if left alone with him. How many times had she felt so strong going into seeing him, only to break the moment he looked at her with his sad, sad eyes. 

No, she wasn’t ready for that.

And she still wasn’t ready a few weeks after that, when he walked into the bar during their game. He was disheveled, looking sad and gaunt and a little damp from the rain outside.

Merrill saw him enter first, big eyes going even wider as she furiously kicked Hawke under the table. 

“Ow! Merrill, what’s going—“

They all saw him approach, and a tenseness fell on the group like a sledgehammer. 

“Hawke,” Anders said as he reached the table. She turned to face him properly, feeling her body go cold. There were those eyes, that warm, golden sort of whiskey color she so adored.

Except, it didn’t feel the same. There was no warmth there, no warmth in her. 

“You’re not welcome here, Anders,” Varric said, the lack of a nickname colder than anything else.

“I had to see you, Marian,” Anders said to her, kneeling before her and taking her hands, cards and all. She yanked away, setting her cards on the table.

“I had a really good hand,” she told him. “Now Bela’s seen it for sure, and you ruined my win.”

“Marian,” he began, reaching for her face. She slapped his hand away, glaring at him.

“Let’s step outside,” she told him. She stood quickly, knocking her chair back. Those around them at the Hanged Man were silent, watching the dramatics unfold. Some of the other regulars knew well enough who he was. Most people in city knew who Hawke was.

Isabela was the first of the group to protest. “Hawke.”

“I’ll be back before the next round starts,” she said coolly. 

She led Anders outside, where the rain was falling in rows and rows and rows. There was the tiniest little stoop at the entrance, but people were still trying to come in and out. 

Reckless as ever, Hawke dragged Anders into the rain with her.

“This needs to end,” she yelled over the rain. “I can’t keep playing this back-and-forth with you, Anders.”

“I’m sorry,” he yelled back, tears mixing with the rain. “But I love you, Marian, I need you in my life.”

“If that was true, we wouldn’t be here again,” she shouted. “I’m done, Anders. I’m really, truly over this nightmare.”

She moved to step back from him, but he grabbed her arm just enough to stop her. “Please, Marian! I’d marry you tomorrow if it’d keep you with me! I’ll do anything, I’ll—“

“We’d be divorced by next week, Anders,” she told him. “It’s never going to work between us. Never. Not with us the way we are. I need someone who loves me more than their work. You will never be like that.”

“I do love you more than my work!”

“No, you—!” She tried to stop the tears from falling, but she couldn’t. She yanked her arm free. “No, you don’t, Anders. Don’t… Don’t ever call me again.”

She spun around and went back into the bar, tears and rain dripping from her in waves. She wasn’t sure how she could face her friends like this, crying and dripping and shaking. She thought to run for the bathroom first, but the moment she was inside, they were there. Bela wrapped her arms around her, whispering soothing nothings into her ear. Merrill dabbed at her clothes and exposed skin with a pile of flimsy napkins, diligently drying her tears and rainwater. Varric put a hand on her free shoulder, giving her a firm squeeze. Aveline put a hand on her back and called Anders a “tit”. Sebastian procured a towel somehow and helped Merrill in her work. 

And Fenris, he stood nearby, looking uncertain and uncomfortable but openly concerned. 

Hawke just cried. 

~~~

She made it home and into warm, dry sweats. She fell asleep on her couch, the fireplace smoldering in her upscale apartment as she wrapped a blanket and the memory of her friends around her and fell asleep.

She didn’t want to get up the next morning. She didn’t need to go in that day at all, but she still forced herself to stand and take a shower and get some semblance of dressed. She went through her pile of jeans and leggings and wondered if she would ever get a pair without holes in them. Probably not. 

She was just about to give up on her damp, hopeless hair when the doorbell rang.

Thinking that it was time to just trim her hair again, she opened the door.

Fenris stood there in her usual all-black attire, wearing a beanie. He held a drink holder with two to-go cups from A Cold Brew Away and his messenger back over his shoulder.

“Fenris!” Hawke said, as if trying to communicate to her own brain that he was there. “Hi!”

“Good morning,” he said in that senselessly deep voice. “May I…”

“Of course!” she said, jumping aside to let him in. “Make yourself comfortable. It’s, uh, a bit… No I guess it is pretty clean. Not my doing, of course. I pay a company to clean it up once a week. If it was up to me, well…”

Fenris looked about as he entered. It was an open-concept space with a nice, marbled kitchen that was much larger than Hawke had need for and a plush living room with a white brick fireplace. 

“Your home is…not what I expected.”

“I know,” she said, wringing her hands as she closed the door and walked further in beside him. “It’s too nice, isn’t it? But it’s close enough to the bar and to my mother, and it’s nice to feel fancy sometimes, right?”

He turned to face her, still clutching the drink holder in one, tensed hand. “I, uh, was worried I might come by too early. But I thought to visit. And I brought coffee.”

She smiled. “You’re always welcome! Come in, come in, let’s sit.”

The settled in the living room, coffee on the appropriately named coffee table. Fenris handed her one cup, and she took a sip.

“This is my coffee!” she cried. 

“Yes, I just gave it to you,” Fenris said.

“No, I mean this is my coffee. The kind I always get!”

He seemed confused. “What else would I bring?”

“I just didn’t know that you knew what kind of coffee I liked,” she said. 

“Ah, I just asked the staff. I assumed after we ran into one another there that you might go there often, so I asked.”

She took another sip and smiled. “Thank you, Fen. I’ll pay you back for the coffee.”

“It’s my gift,” he said simply, deftly shooting down her offer.

It felt strange to accept a gift from him, knowing the wealth disparity there, but she didn’t protest further. 

“I thought… Forgive me if I was wrong, but I thought you might appreciate company today,” he said, a little rough. 

“Yes, you were right,” she said softly. “It’s good just to…have something else to think about. It’s silly really. It’s been over for ages, even in my mind, but to finally have that confrontation…”

They were quiet for a long moment, then Fenris said, “When he left me, I…didn’t know what to do. The way I reacted… I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t a person, even. I felt like I’d lost my mind. Sometimes I wonder what might have been different if I’d had someone there. Someone like you, or Sebastian, or even Merrill, to tell me I wasn’t crazy. Or that I was.”

They were sitting across from each other, Fenris on the couch and Hawke in a plush armchair. She wished she knew how to comfort him, but she didn’t.

“You were dating someone…bad?” was all she managed.

He was looking down at the cup in his hands, but he cracked a little smile. “Yes. Very bad. Tevinter crime lord bad.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, and he laughed again. 

“That’s why I’m here. He left, but then he came back. Then he left again, and then back. He didn’t want me to be free of him. I didn’t either, for a long time. But then, I got an opportunity, and I ran.”

“To Kirkwall, of all places.”

“To Kirkwall.”

“He sounds…awful,” she said.

Fenris shrugged. “He was. But…it’s been almost two years, and I haven’t seen any sign of him since I came here. Part of me hopes… Maybe he’s given up.”

Hawke leaned forward intently. “You know I have a million connections in this city. He won’t lay a hand on you.”

He chuckled again, meeting her eyes for a brief moment. “I didn’t tell you to get you involved, Hawke. Just to…commiserate, I suppose.”

“Still,” she muttered, and he laughed perhaps a little more than was necessary. It helped them relax again into calmer topics. 

They talked about the bar, about their friends. Fenris told Hawke about a book of poetry he was reading, which sparked a dozen questions from Hawke. With some goading, he recited one poem and left Hawke gushing about his voice.

“Really, you should ask Varric about audiobooks,” she said. “He’s been thinking of turning his books into audiobooks, you know.”

“You think I should be the voice of Hard in Hightown?”

She only beamed.

The doorbell rang again. Puzzled, Hawke jumped up to let Varric in.

“I knew you’d be all holed up in your apartment, feeling sorry for—“

He stopped when he reached the living room, finding Fenris on the couch. 

“Fenris had the same idea,” Hawke told him, suddenly feeling like she’d been caught in something. “Came by a little while ago to keep me from going mad.”

Fenris grunted in agreement, but he seemed a little red in the face for some reason. 

“Riiiight,” Varric said. “Well, three’s a party as they say!”

He plopped into the other armchair, and the rest of the day was a cycle of friends visiting Hawke, bringing various amounts of food as they came. 

Aveline appeared, mysteriously carting around Officer Donnic, who had brought cards. Isabela and Merrill came arm in arm shortly after, initiating a card game. Sebastien dropped by as well, carrying a modest lunch for everyone.

Fenris disappeared mysteriously during lunch, and Hawke excused herself from the group in the living room to find him in the kitchen. 

“There you are,” she teased. “You alright? There are a lot of people here.”

“You have a wine fridge,” he noted, currently crouched in front of her open wine fridge, inspecting bottles.

“Isn’t it nice?” she asked. “I keep the regular wine here. Varric likes to talk shit about my taste in wine, so I’m not as classy as you, but I do love a good red.”

“There is something to be said for Varric’s keen eye,” Fenris muttered, frowning at a wine label. 

“I told you, these are the regular ones. The cheaper ones. The fancy stuff I keep in the cellar.”

“The cellar?” he repeated, his full focus on her. 

“This building has a really nice wine cellar, and I rent a piece of it. Keep the nicer stuff there for special occasions.”

“A wine cellar,” he said again.

Hawke laughed. “Do you want to see the cellar, Fenris?”

His expression, for once, told her everything. She took his hand without thinking, pulling him out of the kitchen and out of the apartment. 

“We have to go downstairs,” she explained as they stepped onto the elevator. She dropped his hand. She swiped a keycard so the elevator would allow them into the cellar. It dinged when they arrived, opening into rows and rows of wine locked behind bars.

“Welcome to Wine Jail!” Hawke announced, sweeping out her arms as they stepped out of the elevator. 

For all her joking, it was a nice space. The cellar was warmly lit with sturdy, elegant mats. 

“Bougie,” Fenris observed.

“Isn’t it crazy?” she asked, leading him to her section. She unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. “And here’s my little trove.”

Fenris went for the nearest bottle, picking it up in his tattooed hands. She caught herself staring at the way he delicately turned the bottle. 

Huh, that’s weird, she thought. 

His eyebrows shot upwards, drawing a chuckle from her. 

“Is that an impressed look or a disgusted one?”

“Impressed,” he said, setting back the wine. “I didn’t know you collected.”

“I’m not the fanciest person,” she confessed. “I’ll take a glass of the boxed stuff and happily, you know? But I love wine, especially a good red. Varric knows people, because of course he does. Some of these were part of the Amell estate.”

“Amell?” he asked, glancing at her before turning his focus back to the wine.

“My mother’s family,” she explained. “Did Varric not regal you with that one? She came from a rich, fancy family. She left it all to elope with Dad. When we fled to Kirkwall, her family was all dead and the estate taken over. Took ages and saving the mayor’s son to get it all back. Turns out they had a secret cellar that the thieves and squatters never found, so I’ve got most of what was there in here now.”

He looked back at her, the light hitting those green eyes to create a color she’d never seen before. She lost her breath for a moment.

“Your past never fails to surprise me,” he said softly. 

She laughed, glancing down and shifting on her feet. “It’s just life, you know? We all deal with it as it comes. Feels like everything in the moment. Then later, it feels like nothing. Like it was a different Marian who fled to Kirkwall and saved the mayor’s son.”

He walked back closer to where she stood, still examining wine. “Marian… That’s your first name?”

“You didn’t know?”

He flushed. “I’d never heard anyone call you anything but Hawke. Not until Anders…”

“You didn’t even know my name!” she teased. “We’ve been friends for how long and you didn’t even know my name!”

Still a little flushed, he just chuckled in his deep, gravelly voice.

“Marian,” he mused as he held another bottle. It was like he was trying out the name. She felt a little odd. Not quite...right. 

“Fenris,” she said sternly. 

He met her eyes, wearing a little smile. A content sort of smile, like this was an easy and fun interaction. It meant so much to her. 

“That’s my favorite,” she said suddenly, jumping towards him to pick up the bottle he reached for. “See? It’s Antivan from this amazing orchard. I’ve had some of their lesser bottles and--”

She pressed the butt of the bottle against her stomach to stabilize it enough to free a hand. She made a gesture to say it was delicious and returned both hands to the wine. “I was saving it… Well, I don’t suppose I need to anymore.”

“What were you saving it for?” he asked.

It was her turn to blush. “Oh, I used to think Anders and I… Ugh, I was saving it for my wedding. Cheesy as that sounds.”

He smirked. “That doesn’t seem that cheesy.”

She plopped it back in place, a little ding ringing out. “Well, not needed anymore. Could pop it open right now for all it matters.”

“You should keep saving it.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’re not exactly lining up, Fen. Anders was my best chance, and you caught a glimpse of how well that went.”

He tilted his head, staring thoughtfully at the wine. “I think more people are lining up than you realize. You just don’t notice them, Hawke.”

She watched his expression, searching for…. What was she searching for? She wasn’t sure.

She sighed loudly. “Well, anyone who expects me to be good with subtlety is not a good partner for me.”

That made him laugh, which left her smiling again. 

When his laughter died, he asked, “Can we leave? Being in a cell…”

“Ah, right!” she said, stumbling as she moved quickly to lead him out. “It’s a bit weird, right? They try to make it look warm and inviting, but bars are bars, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. 

They returned to her apartment, where the party went on without them. Oblivious, Hawke didn’t quite catch the knowing glances shot at her upon their return.


	6. Cards on the Table

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After recovering from the on and off again drama of Anders, Hawke's life has found a place of peace. That peace is disrupted when Varric implies there's something growing between her and Fenris. Echoed by the rest of her friends, Hawke begins to re-evaluated their past interactions to make a difficult choice.

“We need to talk about Fenris,” Varric announced at their coffee date. 

“I’ve been expecting this,” Hawke mused seriously.

It had been two months since she’d officially ended things with Anders. She’d block his number and every form of contact she knew. She felt lighter, freed. 

It had always been a few weeks since Varric released his first audiobook, narrated by Fenris. It was an instant hit between Varric’s previous success and Fenris’s gravelly voice detailing crime serials. They’d released the next two in a rush to meet the holiday season, and those, too, sold like mad.

“I need him to narrate more,” Varric told her. “Pays better than the bar. Less hours. Easier work.”  
She closed her eyes tightly and nodded slowly.

“He’s going to resign from the bar.” Varric said. “I assured him, if this went south, he’d still have work with us. But I need his time more than the bar.”

Hawke put one hand over her heart, sighing deeply. Then she grinned, snapping her eyes open. “I knew this was coming! Couldn’t be happier for him. Sucks we’ll have to hire other help.”

“I have that under control,” he said. “But that isn’t all. You know what this means, him quitting?”

She frowned, taking a sip of her cooling coffee. “He won’t be around as much?”

“Well, yes, but--”

“He’ll get paid more, I hope.”

“I said that, but--”

“His life will get better? I don’t get what you’re getting at.”

He shook his head. “You won’t be his boss anymore.”

“Right.”

“And that means…”

“That means…”

“You’re really going to play this?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re saying!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “No idea!”

He frowned at her, but leaned in and said, “You can finally ask him out.”

She blinked, hands still frozen in the air. “I’m sorry?”

“Hawke.”

She dropped her hands. “You think I’m into Fen?”

“Think?” He laughed. “We all know, for a fact, that you’ve fallen for him.”

She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I… I have no idea…”

“You can’t be this clueless Hawke.”

“I mean, I compliment him, but that doesn’t mean…”

“You look at him like he’s an angel,” Varric told her, holding up one hand and counting on his fingers as he went. “You light up when he shows up anywhere, ever, even if he just went to piss. You get all sweet when you talk about him. You slather on the Hawke-brand-awkward-charm when he’s around. You’re absolutely smitten.”

“I’ve never been smitten in my life!” Hawke said, slamming her hands down a little too harshly. The shop around them glanced at her, not that she noticed. “I’m not in love with Fen!”

“I didn’t say love.”

“Oh, don’t play that with me! It’s what you implied.”

“Is it not true?” he asked. “Really Hawke. You haven’t noticed?”

“I’ve noticed nothing,” she insisted. “Because there’s nothing to notice!”

He picked up his phone, donning a disinterested expression. “Well, that’s good because he’s got a date with some new guy tonight.”

“Good for him!”

“Yeah, seems pretty serious. Saw him kiss the guy before coming in to the studio. Big deal for Broody.”

“You’re lying!”

“Am I?” he asked, glancing over his phone at her. “Does the idea upset you? Why don’t you ask him yourself if it’s true?”

She fumed at the man, but his phone rang before she could respond. His next meeting, one with his publisher. She seethed as he walked out the coffee shop, damn bastard grinning all the while.

~~

Fenris broke the news about his job that evening as they closed the bar.

“Varric warned me,” she responded. “Congrats Fen!”

“Ah, thank you,” he said. After a quiet moment, he said, “I thought you might be...upset.”

“Varric thought so too,” she noted. “I don’t know why. This is good for you. I’ll miss working with you, but it’s a small price to pay for you to make a career for yourself.”

“I have gotten offers for other work, too,” he confessed.

“See? And you deserve it,” she said.

“Thank you, Hawke,” he said. “I… It means a lot. Having worked here. And you congratulating me…”

She stopped sweeping to beam at him. “I’m hugging you mentally, Fen. All the love.”

He chuckled and turned back to putting up chairs.

She’d made a mistake, saying “love”. It set her stomach all strange. Varric had gotten in her head, the little bastard. Surely she didn’t love Fen, not romantically.

But was he really dating someone?

“Speaking of things going well,” she began, desperately trying to stop her traitor mouth from asking. “I hear you’ve met someone.”

He stopped to look at her, brows furrowed. “What?”

“Uh, no? Was my source wrong? Or full of shit, the bastard.”

“I’m not… They were incorrect.”

“Oh,” she said, a little too high-pitched. “Must’ve just been Varric gossiping.”

He didn’t say anything, so she busied herself by picking up the broom. Then, “Have you been seeing anyone? Now that...that man is gone?”

“Anders?” she asked. The name sparked none of the warmth or passion or turmoil it once did. Only a sort of smoking feeling where a forest fire raged. And Varric thought she was in love with Fenris! She felt nothing like that for him. “No, no, me neither. I told you, if there’s lining up, they’re at the wrong bar.”

He chuckled. HIs laughter flowed easier these days. Was it her, or did he laugh more when it was just them? Probably in her head. Damn Varric.

“Time alone isn’t so bad,” he mused.

“Uhhhhh,” she groaned. “Maybe for you, but my biological clock is ticking. And I’d like to have my partner alone for a few years first, you know?”

“You want children,” he noted.

It wasn’t a question, but still she tucked a hair behind her ear and said, “Yeah. I helped raise my siblings, but I was still so young. And I loved having that whole family. I’d like a few kids.”

“Is it important to you that you birth them?” he asked. His tone was polite, curious even. It might have felt invasive from someone else, but from him it just seemed like curiosity. “Your clock wouldn’t be such an issue then.”

Hawke considered the thought. “You know, I haven’t really thought about it much. I guess not, no. Maybe I should adopt instead. But I want a partner, still. And I’d like to be young enough to play and keep up with my kids easily. I’d hate to have to stay in shape so long.”  
She slouched, drawing another chuckle from him.

“And what about you, handsome?” she teased. “Dreaming of a family?”

Just like his, her question seemed to come as a surprise. “I haven’t thought about it much. I’m not as worried about time, though. Maybe I wouldn’t want children on my own, but with the right person…”

“The right person makes anything possible,” she finished when he trailed off. “My parents were like that. Went through so much hell together, always laughing and staring into each others’ eyes all lovey-dovey. Even now, Mom endures so much with just the memory of Dad.”

She sighed, thinking of all the moments from her childhood with the two. “They were so in love. I want that so badly.”

“I hope you find that, Hawke,” Fenris said softly.

She smiled brightly at him, saying, “And I hope you find what you want, Fen.”

He glanced down at that, almost like he was embarrassed. But that didn’t make sense.

What was Varric thinking?

~~

“So,” came Isabela’s sultriest voice, “How are things with Fenris?”

It was another night of Wicked Grace, sans the new voice actor. Hawke was eyeing her cards, moving them about in her hand thoughtfully as Varric finished dealing. 

“He’s great,” she said cheerfully. “Working tonight. Some thriller about pirates, or maybe the pirates were a different job? Hm, I forgot. But he’s been getting lots of offers, even hired a manager. Got a better apartment - we just helped him move in!”

“I know that,” she said, waving a hand as her tone returned to normal. “We all went out to help him move. No, I’m talking about you and Fenris. How’s that going?”

Hawke looked up in confusion, seeing all eyes on her.

“Varric,” she admonished, setting her cards face-down. “What bullshit have you been spreading?”

“Varric doesn’t have to say anything,” Merril told her severely. “We’ve all noticed on our own. Even me!”

“You know when Daisy picks up on the signals it’s serious,” Varric noted.

Turning to Sebastian, Hawke demanded, “You too? Now I’m just disappointed.”  
He smiled. “You talk about each other constantly.”

“I do not--” her voice tumbled over its indignant tone to come to a halt. “Wait, he talks about me?”

Fenris and Sebastian had taken to each other quite naturally, which had been anything but expected. Fenris was quiet about it, but apparently he went down each week to the chantry and met with Sebastian. Hawke had decided to bite her tongue. While she had many, many thoughts on the chantry, she wouldn’t begrudge those for whom the Chant brought some comfort. Fenris certainly deserved it.

But to think he wasted any of his time with Sebastian talking about her, well, it wasn’t possible.  
A unanimous sigh -- or groan in the case of Isabela and Varric -- told her otherwise. 

“Are you serious?” Hawke asked. 

“Serious about what?” Aveline asked as she approached the table. Donnic trailed behind her, smiling warmly at them. Hawke rather liked Donnic, more than she thought she would, certainly. While he was certainly straight-laced as anything - no alcohol or drugs for him! - he had a surprisingly wicked sense of humor behind his calm, quiet demeanor. He was a good balance for Aveline, keeping her grounded while bringing some life to her world. 

They were openly holding hands until they took their seats, so it seemed as official as it would get.

Varric turned to them, holding a hand up to halt the rest of the table. “You two spend a lot of time with Broody. Who would you say his favorite person is?”

Aveline narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but Donnic only frowned and said, “Fenris? Well it’s Hawke, isn’t it?”

Hawke’s face went aflame. Because while Fenris visited Sebatian as part of his chantry-going habits each week, he often met with Donnic and/or Aveline for cards, meals, and other events. And that was purely social.

“See?” Varric said to Hawke, smug as anything.

“It doesn’t mean anything, necessarily,” Hawke squeaked. Another chorus of groans.

“Is that what this is about?” Aveline asked, the tension from her suspicion fading from her shoulders and eyes. “Hawke and Fenris?”

Hawke looked to her desperately. “They’re convinced there’s something going on.”

“No,” Isabela interjected. “We know there isn’t anything actually going on. We just know there should be. You two certainly want it.”

She winked. Aveline rolled her eyes at Isabela, but to Hawke said, “I didn’t know you were in denial.”

“Denial?” Hawke’s voice went higher than it’d been in decades. 

Donnic’s expression sat between bemusement and concern for her. “Haven’t you noticed? I mean, even if you’re not around to hear how he talks about you, you’re the only one he lets call him ‘Fen’ or touch him or anything.”

“Remember when you ended it with Anders, and Fenris was there before I was the next day?” Varric prompted.

“He’s a friend,” she insisted. “We’re close, but… That doesn’t mean there’s more…”

“Can you at least acknowledge that you’re attracted to him?” Isabela asked, leaning forward onto the table. “Honestly I’m just curious how in denial you are.”

“He’s a handsome man--”

“But are you attracted to him?” Isabela insisted. “You know I’m a gorgeous, sexy woman, but you don’t want to have sex with me. Or make out or whatever.”

Hawke felt her blood chill as her mind raced through memories, like a frantic secretary digging through old files. Shaking off dust and seeing everything in a new light. 

The time when she almost ran into him with the scissors, running away from Anders with him, the entire wine cellar experience, his voice.

“Maker,” she whispered.

Sebastian reached out to put a hand on her shoulder as she pressed her face into her hands. Because it wasn’t just a physical thing. She’d tried to tell herself that she admired his looks, of course, but that was all. But that was a lie. A recurring lie. She felt much more.

She popped her head up. “But wait, that can’t be. I feel nothing like what I felt with Anders.”

Aveline’s voice went soft, gentle. “That’s because he’s a different man. I’ll never feel the way I felt about Wesley again. That doesn’t mean I don’t care for Donnic.”

Donnic smiled at her sweetly, taking her hand. 

“Probably for the best,” Isabela said with a shrug and a swig of her drink. “Anders was a mess. That entire relationship was chaos. That isn’t you. Remember? Gardens and babies and quiet nights reading with wine.”

Hawke’s breath stopped as Isabela reminded her of that picture she’d painted so long ago, the future Isabela had imagined Hawke wanted, really truly wanted in her soul. And Bela had been right. And all in the breath before Fenris appeared. Fenris, who liked taking long walks outside. Who liked tea and loved wine. Who read in all his quiet moments. Who would maybe have children with the right person.

Was she the right person? Had he been trying to tell her something?

She gasped, bolting to her feet. The wine cellar! He’d told her there were people interested, people she didn’t see. Was that meant to be a hint? And she, like the pure idiot she was, went and rejected him!

To be fair, she hadn’t rejected anything. She’d said that such subtlety was lost on her. And then he’d laughed. Because she was right.

Merrill sighed deeply, dreamily as she watched Hawke. “Please tell me you’re going to run off and find him and kiss him, or something romantic.”

Hawke stared at her for a moment, then said, “I’ll decide on the way.”

She bolted from the bar, her friends cheering behind her as her racing heart dragged her forward.


	7. Ready Yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke rushes to see Fenris, to make some grand declaration worthy of a film award. But is she ready for change? And what risks might this change carry for Fenris?

The drive to Fenris’s apartment took a million years. Traffic was terrible today. She couldn’t even be sure he’d be there. He was working, which was why he missed the game. But by the time she got there… He walked everywhere, after all. As much as he could, anyway.

She reached his new building, parked messily in a space marked “VISITOR” and bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time and nearly landing on her face. She cursed as she stumbled up to the third floor. She’d hated that he was on the third floor when they all helped him move. Now she was a little glad. It was an excuse for her heart to be racing, for her face to be red, for her to be out of breath.

The door opened as she reached it, before she could knock. Fenris stood there, calm and collected in his usual all-black, while hair uncovered. It was barely tied back - it had gotten a little long. Hawke had teased him about cutting it again, which had made him mumble a lot.  
He looked like he was expecting her.

“I heard you coming,” he said, answering a question she didn’t have to ask. “Your steps are...distinct. And you cursed. Is everything alright, Hawke?”

She fought to catch her breath, to look half as cool as he always did. It was a lost cause. “Yeah, yeah. You’re home! I was worried you wouldn’t be.”

“We finished up early,” he said. “I thought about going to the Hanged Man, but the walk was so far that I wouldn’t get there in time for it to be worth it. I’m sorry I missed it.”

She shook her head. “Oh, it’s totally fine. Everyone’s super happy for all your new work.”

He stepped back from the door and into his apartment, a silent invitation. Hawke followed him in, closing the door softly behind her. 

His apartment was small, without much in the way of windows. It was night anyway, but it had an eternally cozy, dark energy to it. Like a vampire lived there, but a chill one. It was a studio, technically speaking. There was a second sort-of floor to it, a loft where his bed was. Getting it up there had been fun. But luckily he’d bought a brand new bed, so the furniture delivery people were there to help. There was a little staircase up the side, but there was also a simple ladder. 

Under the loft lived the bookshelves Donnic and Aveline had helped him build leading up to the move. Of the three, only one was completely full, but his collection was growing. There was also a large, plush armchair he’d found when Hawke had dragged him to the flea market one Saturday morning, and a workspace. There was also a larger living space, but no couch just yet. The kitchen was small, with a large breakfast-bar-style counter and a pair of bar stools. Boxes littered the apartment, many opened with their contents carefully packaged inside. Near the door was a pile of broken down boxes, as neatly arranged as they could be.

In the kitchen stood Fenris, standing at the stove with his attention on something cooking. He’d cooked once or twice for the group, and he was marvelous at it. Hawke could hold her own in a kitchen, but for all her love of food and her active imagination, she lacked the ability to create anything new. Fenris was the type to look at a recipe, then change about half of it to create something fantastic without hesitation. 

“You’re making dinner,” Hawke observed. “Sorry, is this a bad time? I should’ve called.”

His back was to her, and he made no indication that he sensed the anxiety replacing her adrenaline. Now that she was here, in his new home, staring at the back of his head, noticing the dark green apron he wore, she feared she was doing the wrong thing. She cared about Fenris, deeply, before romantic feelings were even considered. If things went sour, she lost that friendship. That closeness. And what if he felt compelled to be with her because of her status? After all, he knew that the friend group had rejected Anders and chosen Hawke when that went south. Sure, that was mostly because Anders was an ass and not because things simply didn’t work out, but still. What if he felt trapped? Just like with his ex?

“You have impeccable timing as always, Hawke,” Fenris said, his voice a relaxed murmur over the simmer of the food. “I thought you smelt it somehow. I’m making enough, if you haven’t eaten.”

“I haven’t,” she said. Was that true? Did it matter?

He looked back at her, and she was captured by those green eyes in a way she now knew was more than admiration. “Will you set the...ah, bar?”

He didn’t have a proper dining table, at least not yet. But he did have the stools and the bar. Hawke rummaged through the kitchen, finding it mostly unpacked and very neatly organized. 

“What’s for dinner?” she asked, peering at the stove to know what she would need to pull.

“Just pasta,” he said, stepping back to peer into the oven. He donned oven mitts - a far too cute and completely mis-matched house-warming gift from Merrill - and removed a tray of garlic bread. “Nothing special. Angel hair with chicken and cherries.”

“Cherries?” Hawke repeated, her delighted tone drawing a chuckle from him. She’d never had cherries in pasta. 

He finished preparing the food, and Hawke dutifully appeared with their plates. Together they filled the plates, and Hawke carried them to the counter.

“I’ll get the pinot noir you gave me,” he said, pulling wine glasses from a high shelf. “It’ll pair.”

Varric’s housewarming gift had been exclusive, fancy wine. Two simple bottles that made Fenris’s eyes brighten. Hawke had given him a dozen bottles of “decent crap”. She was always so afraid to “waste” the good wines she had, so she thought he deserved a collection of wines that were good, but without the expectations.

Wine in their glasses and butts in the stools, they set about eating. Hawke nearly forgot why she was there, and Fenris hadn’t even asked. Instead, they were lost in the food and a conversation about his latest job and the move and her family’s latest antics. 

She was laughing and eating and looking at him and feeling at home. Everything with Fenris was warm, natural. Never boring, but effortless in a significant way. She’d learned to read his expressions, minute as they were, and she’d grown past her more-awkward stage of trying to make him like her. They were friends. Easy and comfortable.

Did she really want to change that?

She was slowly tearing one piece too many of garlic bread when she finally asked, “You haven’t asked why I’m here.”

Fenris looked at her over the rim of his glass as he drank. He set it down, his full attention on her. She couldn’t help but glance away. He was so intense when he wanted to be. Not overbearing, but just intense. 

“I...didn’t,” he agreed. He cleared his throat and said, “I thought you just came to visit.”

Something in his tone caught her attention. “Oh! No, of course I wanted to visit, Fen. I just, uh. Yeah.”

She wasn’t even eating the bread, just destroying it. 

“Hawke, is everything really alright?” he asked. “You’re behaving strangely.”

“More than usual?” she asked with a cheeky grin. He raised a brow and didn’t smile. She shouldn’t have brought it up, because now he wasn’t going to let it go. She wondered where he’d learned that from.

“I don’t really know,” she confessed, rendering the last bit of bread to a crumbled mess on her plate. She wiped her fingers clean on a paper towel napkin and shrugged. She would try for casual. As if that ever worked for her. “I was just talking with everyone, and I wanted to see you.”

He didn’t say anything. He knew how to use silence. Hawke did not, and she felt words bubbling from her lips anxiously as she stared ahead, looked at the plate, the cabinets, everything but him. 

“Well, I’m glad you did,” he said softly.

She almost said it, said something about the gossip around them and the crazy and totally not-accurate idea everyone seemed to have about them. But then…

She was just so happy. So many people, so many relationships and precious times had slipped through her fingers like water. She wasn’t ready to let this go, to push them from such a peaceful comfortable space into something that might be really different. Irreversibly different. 

Hawke just wasn’t ready. But as she drank another glass and laughed at a story about Fenris’s temporary coworker and the studio he recorded at, she realized she was okay with that. Or at least, she needed to pretend to be. For now.


	8. Always Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke's birthday is coming up, a grand event orchestrated by her mother. It'll be the weekend of a lifetime, that is, if Hawke can convince everyone to attend.

Hawke’s birthday, Marian Hawke’s, was set to be the biggest Hawke family reunion in over a year. 

Sure, Hawke saw her mother regularly, often once a week. And yes, she saw her siblings from time to time. But they hadn’t all been together in months, and they hadn’t spent a dedicated day with one another in over a year.

Hawke, Marian, was looking forward to it. Like a little kid, she crossed off days and counted down until the big event. Her birthday fell on a blissful Saturday that year. They were closing the bar so everyone could trek out to the Amell estate for the weekend.

“Your birthday is coming up,” Leandra reminded her.

Hawke snorted, kicking the refrigerator door closed while she cracked open the soda can she’d freed. “Yeah, in two months?”

“Well, yes, but it’s a big year,” she prompted.

Hawke groaned. 

“Thirty is an important milestone!”

“Just like the gray hair I found last week, yeah,” Hawke grumbled. “Do we really have to make a big thing out of it?”

“I think you’ll really like what I have planned, dear.”

“Maker, what are you scheming?”

Her mother cackled on the other end, then explained, “I just thought a nice weekend here at the estate. We could make your favorite meals, have the twins home for the weekend, invite your friends to stay. You always wanted to go to a proper sleepaway camp, and this isn’t nearly the same, but I thought this might be a more adult, bougier sort of camp.”

“Huh,” Hawke mused. “That might be really fun.”

“Orana and I have been planning it all out,” the woman said eagerly, joy barely contained. “We fixed up that extra, useless dining room into this lovely sort of movie room that I think will be lovely. And we had all those guest rooms finally cleaned, so I’d like to get some use out of them before they get all dusty again. And planning this early gives your friends time to schedule it out. They seem like the type to enjoy this sort of grown-up-kid weekend. And if they’re not excited, just tell them it’s free boarding and food and drink all weekend. Alcohol, the proper kind of drink.”

Hawke laughed. “And the twins might be there?”

“Oh, they will be there,” she said severely. “I’ve gotten agreements from both of them to make the time! Carver tried to say he wasn’t sure his commander would allow it, so I called his commander and explained that the Champion of Kirkwall needed her esteemed brother’s presence. Carver was so embarrassed!”

Hawke cackled along with her mother. “Was he really that against coming?”

She wanted to pretend it was a light-hearted question, but there was some unintended weight behind it.

“Oh, you know how he gets,” her mother said absently. “He gets so into his routine that he hates to break it. When he stopped being so annoyed with me, he started telling me all these ideas he has for your present. I think he’s secretly very excited dear. You’ll have to be sure to spend some time with him - I know he’s too proud to ask.”

“I will, Mama,” Hawke said, holding the cold can to her chest. 

“Alright, then. Start telling your friends! I’ll have nice invitations sent out tomorrow, but I don’t want to dwaddle! Orana needs my help, but we’ll talk soon, dear.”

“Yes, Mama,” Hawke said. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, darling.”

The phone had hardly clicked to silence before Hawke was opening the group chat.

Who wants to spend a weekend getting roaring drunk at the Amell estate??

Isabela was the first to respond in a mere second.

Darling i thought youd never ask <3

After Isabela came Varric’s confirmation, then Merrill’s. Donnic was not in the usual group chat, so Hawke invited him as well. He had to wait a few days for work to approve it, but then he and Aveline were on board as well. Sebastian couldn’t stay the whole weekend, not until he casually mentioned Hawke’s name to his supervising mother, who suddenly decided being on the Champion’s good side was worth the loss of him for a few days.

By the time the week had passed, Fenris was the only one who hadn’t confirmed. He hadn’t so much as commented on the group chat, and he missed out on that week’s Wicked Grace. 

Hawke was prone to bouts of anxiety, and she wondered if he didn’t want to come. She wanted him there, of course, but she didn’t want him to feel forced. She knew she should just ask if he was coming or not, or if he needed time to decide. He was probably just distracted, forgot to respond. Still.

She got the message the morning after the missed Wicked Grace.

Hawke.

It was the same as any message he used to start a conversation.

Fenris. She replied

If he got the little joke, he did not comment. I have a new recipe I want to try. Duck. Thought it looked like something you would like. Free at 7?

She felt that bubble of excitement fill her chest. She knew what it meant a little more now, for all the good it did her. Would it have killed her friends to keep their mouths shut for once?

Apparently.

For duck?? Always free. Bring anything?

No, he replied. It’ll be ready when you get here.

She spent her day at the bar, working on all the pieces of running a bar that had little to do with the building itself. When she got home, she had just enough time to agonize over her outfit before she had to leave for Fenris’s. Which was ridiculous. Marian had never been one to worry about what she wore. Sometimes she liked to dress up, to look nice whether in a more feminine or masculine sense. But she rarely tried to impress people with her style. Most days were worn, slightly stained jeans with holes in the knees and some kind of top or another. Tonight, she wondered if it would be too weird if she showed up in a dress?

It probably would. She was overthinking this. She pulled on the first clean shirt from the pile and kept on the same jeans she’d been wearing. Fenris didn’t care. Not that it mattered if he did. She was not entertaining these feelings. Not if they might cost her his friendship.

She drove over to his new place, climbing the stairs much more slowly than her last visit. As she reached the top floor, she faintly heard soft music.

Fenris opened the door at her knock, wearing that deep green apron. His hair was fully pulled back, save for a few loose strands that made her fingers itch. He wore tight, dark pants - his usual, but with a maroon shirt.

“Such a colorful ensemble,” she teased. “What’s the occasion?”

He smiled. “Hello, Hawke.”

Her chest constricted at the warmth in his voice, and she followed him into the apartment like a puppy. True to his word, the food was done and laid out on a black metal and dark wood dining table with a modest two chairs.

“This looks so nice!” Hawke gushed. “The food and furniture! So fancy, so Fen!”

He laughed. “I think the duck turned out well enough.”

“I’ve been dreaming of it all day,” Hawke sighed. She washed her hands as he set aside his apron. Together they took their seats. Hawke took the seat that was there, and only once seated did she notice that they were at adjacent edges as opposed to opposite. She preferred it, certainly, but usually kept her personal bubble in place to avoid crossing into Fen’s.   
Don’t read into it, she scolded herself.

“This is amazing,” she sighed over her first taste. Fen smiled over his wine, a small smile poorly hidden. “What’s it like to be so talented, Fen?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, voice tinged with laughter. “What is it like, Hawke?”

She nearly choked on her food laughing. “Being talented? I’m more chaotic and lucky than talented.”

“You have an amazing way with people,” Fenris told her, neatly cutting up his food. Elbows in, fork and knife positioned just so. Something about the scene endeared her deeply. “You’re very charming. I think there’s talent there.”

She snorted. “Again, the luck piece. You’re charming too, Fen.”

He gave her an annoyed sort of look, and she quickly said, “I mean it! You are very charming! Well, at least I’m charmed.”

“You’re different,” he said simply before taking a bite. 

They ate, chatting between bites. Fenris avoided talking about work, saying only that he’d been too busy with it to want to discuss it more. 

“How is your family?” he asked at a quiet moment.

“Great!” she answered. “I’ll get to see Carv and Beth soon enough. Couldn’t be more excited, also a little nervous. My mother and Orana are busy planning for the party.”

“Party?” he repeated.

“Oh, um, yeah,” she said. “My, um, birthday party. You might not have gotten the text? Maybe my phone didn’t send it properly.”

His face flashed. “Oh! No, I remember that. My apologies Hawke. I meant to check my schedule and get back to you.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Totally fine. I mean, it can be a lot to commit to a whole Hawke-themed weekend. And you don’t have a car, so you’d be kinda stuck. You could always go for a walk to get a break, but it’s too far out to walk back to town, and--”

“I want to go,” he told her, arms resting on the table around his cleaned plate. “It sounds nice.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah?”

He sipped from his glass, nearing the end of it. “I never really did that sort of thing as a kid, sleepovers and all.”

“You never had a sleepover?” Hawke exclaimed. “This is going to be amazing, Fen! The literal best sleepover event ever - a kid’s dream come true, but also with alcohol.”

He laughed. “I look forward to it.”

Hawke began rattling off the plans she’d been clued in on. She told him about the lake nearby and the beautiful garden, about the movie room and all the nice guest rooms, about the fire pit for smores and all the food they would have. Fenris listened intently, smiling softly as she waved her hands about, just as excited as her mother had been.


	9. Same Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weekend kicks off with some drinking and, more importantly, Hawke family reunion time. Baby pictures, secret conversation, and teasing Carter included. Also, a Fenris POV moment.

Hawke’s birthday was on a Sunday that year. The Saturday before, the group slowly met up in the bar’s parking lot. Leandra had arranged for a “proper ride” to pick them up, and the group delighted at the sight of the enormous hummer limo that appeared.

“Your birthday wasn’t like this last year,” Fenris commented with a smile to Hawke.

She laughed. “I think Mom just needed something to do, honestly. She’s playing it up because I’m thirty.”

Everyone climbed into the limo, the driver helping them stash their luggage in the back.

Settling in by the minifridge and wet bar, Isabela sighed and said, “Hawke, I think I’m in love with your mother.”

“Get in line,” Merrill said in her lilting voice, drawing a laugh from the group. 

“Hawke,” Merrill said from her spot between Fenris and Varric. “Hawke, can we switch? I think I’ll get car sick in this spot.”

Hawke frowned - Merrill was in a normal, forward facing seat. “Sure, Mer.”

They moved about and shifted until Hawke and Merrill had switched. She felt her shoulder burn from where it touched Fenris’s. There was no helping it - the limo wasn’t packed per se, but not so spacious that there wasn’t some squishing. Luckily Fen’s other side was the window. She wondered if he knew how hard she worked to respect his space. It did not come naturally to her - Hawkes were touchy-people, and her friends had always embraced it. Fen didn’t complain at least. She hoped he would if she ever did cross that line.

The drinking began in earnest, spurred on by Isabela and Varric. Donnic and Sebastian watched on with bemused expressions as the rest of the group devolved. By the time they reached the estate, everyone was well past tispy.

“Hawke!” Merrill cried as they stumbled out of the limo. She launched herself at Hawke, wrapping around her waist tightly. “Happy Birthday!”

Hawke laughed. “Merrill, that’s the eighth time you’ve told me that!”

“Hawke, it’s your birthday,” Merrill said severely. Then her face lit up and she skipped off towards the house.

Mrs. Hawke was the one to open the door, eagerly ushering everyone in.

“Happy birthday, dear,” she told Hawke, giving her a one-armed squeeze and a kiss on the cheek. “The twins are already here - just got in about an hour ago.”

“What!” Hawke cried. “Where are they?”

“Mari!”

Hawke turned from her place in the entryway to see Bethany, emerging from the living room with a bright grin and far longer hair than she remembered. She’d bleached and dyed the ends of it a bright yellow. Varric would get a kick out of that.

“Bethy!” Hawke shouted back, grinning to match her sister. She dropped her bags at her feet as Bethany ran at her, embracing her on impact and spinning them around a bit. She lifted her little sister just a bit off the ground, like when she was little, and Bethany laughed in delight.

“Look at you! Growing more beautiful every day,” Hawke told her as they parted.

“You never change, Marian,” Bethany said with a laugh. “We’ll all be little old grey folks and you’ll still look just like this.”

“Nuh-uh, I’m going gray already!” Hawke announced, ducking her head and pointing roughly to where she’d found the gray.

“She got that from her father,” Leandra murmured to Hawke’s friends. “Never aged a day over thirty, I swear. Always looked so young and rugged.”

Bela sighed. “Sounds dreamy.”

“Oh, he was,” Leandra said severely. Then she smiled, “I pulled out all of the albums I managed to save to show you.”

“I would pay you to show us baby Hawke pictures,” Varric said. 

“Did you used to dress Hawke up when she was a baby?” Merrill asked. “I always see pictures of Fereldan babies all fancied up - I just can’t imagine it.”

Leandra closed the door as the last person, Fenris, made it inside. “Oh, no, Marian couldn’t tolerate any of the dresses or bows. The twins let me put them in anything until they were about five, but Marian wouldn’t stand for it! I had to wait until she was old enough to bribe her for the nicer occasions. But I do have a few of those pictures!”

Having heard enough to know what was going on, Hawke stepped over to say, “Mother. No. No one wants to see my baby pictures.”

“Excuse you,” Isabela said, moving to stand by Bethany and wrap an arm around her waist in greeting. “I would rather die than leave this house without seeing baby Hawke.”

“Oh please Hawke,” Merrill pleaded. “I think I might die if I don’t get to see any pictures!”

“Haven’t I heard that before,” Isabela murmured, drawing a giggle from Bethany. 

“Trollop,” Aveline grumbled. 

“Marian, why don’t you introduce your friends?” Leandra asked.

“Oh, right!” Hawke sometimes forgot they hadn’t all met. 

Varric strode forward first. “Hawke talks about you so much, it’s like we already know you. I’m Varric, co-owner of The Hanged Man and savant.”

He gave her hand a charming, chaste little kiss, drawing a smile from her. “Oh, I feel just the same with all the things she tells me about you all. Varric, wonderful to meet you. You know, I’ve been reading your books lately - well, listening. I just can’t get enough! You’re a marvelous writer.”

“What can I say, I’m a talent.”

Hawke rolled her eyes, then gently guided her mother around the group. “Ma, this is Isabela and Merrill.”

“Merrill, I’ve heard that name before,” Leandra mused.

Bethany leaned in to whisper, “That’s because Carver talks about her too.”

“It’s so good to meet you, Mama Hawke,” Merrill said cheerily. “It’s such a nice home. I’m afraid I might get lost - I’ll try not to wander.”

“Aw, I’ll keep an eye on you, kitten,” Isabela teased.

Hawke moved on. “This is Aveline, you remember her, and her partner Donnic - he’s a police officer!”

“Oh, Hawke had mentioned you found someone nice,” Leandra told Aveline. She shook Donnic’s hand. “I’m so happy for you, dear. We’ll definitely need to catch up this weekend. It’s been too long.”

“Yes, it has,” Aveline said with a smile. The Hawke family had been there to witness her husband Wesley’s death, and they’d been at her side in the ensuing months. A long time had passed, but Mrs. Hawke and Aveline still carried the bond over being widows.

“Sebastian, this is my mother,” Hawke continued.

Sebastian politely shook her hand. “So good to finally meet you, Mrs. Hawke.”

Finally, she turned and said, “And this is Fenris. He’s the voice of Hightown, you know.”

Mrs. Hawke lit up. “Oh! You’re the narrator? Maker, you have such a marvelous voice! I’m so impressed every moment I’m listening.”

Fenris looked a little red. “Thank you, Mrs. Hawke.”

“I’m Bethany,” Bethany said to Fenris. “Hawke’s little sister. You’re the only one of the group we haven’t met yet, me or Carver.”

“Hawke says that you’re in school,” Fenris commented in his quiet, polite tone.

She nodded. “I’m studying journalism - going to be a hard-hitting reporter before you know it.”

“Chaos runs in the family,” Hawke said proudly. 

“More of their father,” Leandra mused.

“Where is Carver?” Hawke asked. “He isn’t avoiding me, is he?”

“He was helping Orana with some of the bulk groceries she got,” Bethany said. She led Hawke further into the house, shouting, “Carver! Marian is here!”

“I heard her come in - she’s not hard to miss,” shouted back a male voice.

They found him in the kitchen, just off the living room. Hawke enveloped the reluctant man into a bear hug. “Look at you, Carv! You’ve got new tattoos! Does the chantry even allow this kind of self-expression.”

Carver rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

“Merrill is here,” Bethany told him.

“So?”

“She was asking about you.”

He flushed. “She was?”

Bethany snorted. “Of course not. Why would she?”

Hawke couldn’t help a laugh. “Bethy! Be nice to Carver! Carver! Make a move or quite pining!”

“What!” Bethany cried. “You’d let Carver date one of your friends, but I’m not allowed--”

“Who is Carver dating, now?” Isabela asked as she sauntered into the kitchen door. 

“No one!” he snapped.

“Aw, poor thing,” Bela said, pouting at him. “You know, I know a few girls who would like your type. Big, strong templar man. I could give you their numbers.”

“Not Crazy Dana,” Hawke interjected. Bethany laughed.

“I’m good, thanks,” Carver muttered, retreating from the kitchen entirely. 

With him gone, Bethany siddled closer to her sister and said in a low voice, “So, that Fenris…”

“Maker, isn’t he?” Bela echoed, mimicking Bethany’s behavior on Hawke’s other side.

“Not my type, but he certainly is--”

“Completely delicious--”

“What,” Hawke began, “are you two talking about?”

Bela tsked. “I thought we were past the denial stage. What even happened that night you went to have some grand confession?”

“What happened?” Bethany asked eagerly.

“Nothing happened!” Hawke cried. “It just-- I don’t know. It’s too important, our friendship. I’m not risking it.”

Bela groaned. “I swear! It’s like you two were made for each other, except you’re both too stupid to see it.”

“Does he like Marian?” Bethany asked. “Has he said?”

Bela leaned in across Marian. “Oh, he definitely does. Just as smitten as her - it’s clear as the tattoos on his face. You’ll see - by the end of lunch you’ll notice about a million signs.”

“I can understand wanting to save the friendship,” Bethany said thoughtfully, “but if you’re both that into each other, then it’s only a matter of time until someone ruins it, right? Someone will say something, or they’ll try to move on, and everyone will still get hurt and things will be weird. Can you even imagine what you’d do if he was with someone else?”

“I would be happy for him!” Hawke said. 

Bethany and Bela shared a mutual look of irritation. 

“Look, it’s my birthday weekend, and we’re not going to talk about this!”

“Bela!” Merrill’s voice called from beyond the kitchen. “Bela! You’re missing the pictures!”

“Oh hell no I’m not!” Bela bolted from the kitchen. As much as she didn’t want to hear her friends tease her over her phases, she much preferred it over being grilled about Fenris.

~~

Everyone else had left the living room to go out on the back balcony for lunch hor d'oeuvres. Fenris would join them, but he needed a moment alone. He stayed on the couch, gently pulling the photo album onto his lap. Carefully, he moved through the photos once more. Baby Hawke, Marian Hawke, face scrunched from birth and dwarfed by her father. He beamed at the camera, eyes bright red from crying, face a mess of joy and tears. The crinkle of his eyes, the shape of his face, his expression, it was all so very Hawke. 

Then it was Hawke with a bowl of ice cream upturned over her father’s head, eyes alight as they both laughed. There she was as a toddler, holding her mother’s hand with a look of disgust at her over-decorated outfit. The next page showed her on her first day of school a few years into her education, a few teeth missing in that familiar smile. Here she was pictured with her father as a young teen, holding one of the twins while he held the other, both looking just as he had with her as a baby. She was playing with the babies, Satinalia with the whole family, vacation to the beach. 

He came upon a later picture, one they didn’t see as a group. It was in a hospital, tingling at the back of his skull with its uncomfortable familiarity. Marian was a teenager, nearly an adult. She sat at her father’s bedside, both of them grinning at the camera like they were on vacation. He looked weaker there, not as robust or lively. But the smile was still the same.

“It was his smile that did it,” came Leandra’s voice. Fenris kept himself from jolting, but only because she was leaning over the couch and not directly behind him. “The first time he smiled like that at me, I was his. I played so hard to get, but in the end… And it was always that bright smile that got me through the hard times. No matter how bad things seemed, Malcolm always had a smile for everyone like he was the luckiest man alive. Even in his final days.”

Fenris stared down at that picture with her. Hawke truly did take after her father. He could see plenty of Leandra in the twins, but Hawke was just a little carbon copy of the man their family had lost.

“She’s just like him,” Leandra said, echoing his thoughts. “His little mini-me. Same desperate need to save everyone, same enormous heart. Same smile.”

She paused, then said, “You know, that Anders boy didn’t look at her right. Nothing like how I looked at my Malcolm. I tried to be understanding, but he just never seemed to appreciate how she could bring an entire room to life just with that silly grin. I always wanted for Marian to find someone who could appreciate her brightness the one I adored Malcolm’s, and now… Well, the way I’ve seen some people look at her reminds me of myself.”

Fenris looked at her, but she was smiling down at the picture. Was she talking about him? How had she noticed in minutes, when Hawke had not in years?

He looked back at the picture, safely nested within thin plastic. “Hawke is special.”

It was all he could say. 

“I thank the Maker every day for her,” Leandra said softly. 

So softly that he wasn’t certain she heard, Fenris said, “Me, too.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, distant, muffled sounds of the group coming in from outside. Finally, Leandra patted his shoulder. “Fenris, will you help me get the last few things outside for lunch?”

He gently closed the album and set it on the coffee table, then stood to follow her to the kitchen.  
What would he say to Hawke? How would he tell her, if he hadn’t already? Actions spoke louder than words, but Hawke either was that obtuse or didn’t want to hear him. He was no good at talking about feelings, never had been. 

The problem was, anytime he thought to say something, it was almost as though he forgot. Something came over him when he was with Hawke, moreso when they were alone. A sort of calm, a kind of peace that everything was perfect just as it was. He had no desire in those moments to make the situation more than it was. He was at peace, and he was happy.

But he wanted more. He used to think he wasn’t ready, then that Hawke wasn’t, but now he wondered. No matter what Hawke said, it was only a matter of time before someone noticed her and grew bold enough to pursue her. He did not have forever, so matter how it felt.


	10. Things Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke is thrown for an anxiety loop when she learns Fenris might actually be seeing someone new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to post chapters despite this fic being done, so I'm just posting the rest now while I have the ~*energy*~.
> 
> Also, *plays Mr. Brightside*

The next morning saw Hawke up earlier than anticipated. She made her way to the kitchen, putting on some coffee and slowly waking herself. From the kitchen, she saw through the windows to the back porch. Her heart warmed at the sight of Fenris, standing outside and leaned against the railing to look over the hills and lake. She set about boiling some water. Her mother had some tea around her - maybe she even had that kind he liked in some fancy variety. She found the tea, and dropped the bag into a steaming mug of water. He liked it steeped in a specific way, but she’d learned it over time. 

Once it was done and the bag discarded, she took their mugs and went to go outside. When she came closer to the window, she paused. 

Orana stood outside beside Fenris - she hadn’t been able to see Orana from her spot in the kitchen. They were talking, she could tell. When he moved closer, she could hear Tevene.  
Something in her soured. She couldn’t imagine why. She thought it was great for them to be getting along. She remembered they seemed to be friendly last night as well. They were both from Tevinter, both went through so much, both lived surrounded by strong Hawke energy.  
She tried to tell herself she was happy, until she saw Orana reach out and put a hand on Fenris’s. It was as though her heart had stopped. She felt cold in a way she didn’t recognize. She turned to the sink and dumped both drinks before returning to her room.

Despite a quick nap, being surrounded by her awake friends and family, and hours gone by, Hawke couldn’t get the image out of her head. Was Orana just being friendly? It was so strange for her to be so touchy - she wasn’t like that. Why had Fenris let her? Didn’t he not like people touching him? Was Orana special? Were they a thing now? 

Hawke gave up trying to deny it to herself - she was jealous. And it was the nasty, fuming kind that sat at the back of her throat, hiding behind her smiles and laughter. She was hyper-aware of Orana and Fenris anytime they were both in the room or both not in her sights. Were they together, when they weren’t in front of her? What did they talk about? Were they getting close that quickly? 

“Hawke,” came a calm voice, interrupting one such jealousy spiral. She was sitting in the living room, everyone else having just gone to get set up in the movie room. She’d promised to join in just a moment. She hadn’t seen Fenris in an hour or so. She also hadn’t seen Orana.  
Sebastian had turned back, it seemed, and he came to sit beside Hawke on the couch. “Is everything alright? You seem distracted and troubled.”

She thought to lie, but she hated lying. She was tired of it, too. “I, uh, I’m just fixating on something stupid. It’s nothing, really.”

“Would you like to talk about it in private?” Sebastian offered. 

“We’re about to watch a movie--”

“I guarantee no one will mind,” he said. “Nor will they ask questions. At least not until later.”

She snorted. “I don’t know. It’s dumb, Sebastian. Not worth your time.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “That isn’t true, Hawke. I spend so much time hearing the troubles of others. Far too many people only ever seek to impress their burdens on others. To be able to offer my support to someone who spends so much of her energy lifting others is an honor and a privilege. Besides that, you are a dear friend, and you have seen me through no small number of my own silly troubles.”

She sighed. “You are so good at getting people to talk. Shoulda been an investigator.”  
He chuckled. “Shall I tell the others to start without us?”

She nodded. He left for a moment, and when he returned they moved into her room to have some quiet. Hawke sat on her bed, legs crossed and clutching a pillow to her chest. Sebastian sat at the little desk in there, completely comfortable. “So, what has been on your mind? Something that happened today?”

“You know what everyone says about me and Fen, right?” she asked. “You were there that night at Wicked Grace.”

“I was,” he said with a nod. “Have you been regretting not taking action that night as planned?”  
“No, it’s just… I don’t know. I don’t want to be petty, and I know envy is a sin, or whatever, but I just can’t help but notice him spending a lot of time with Orana.”

“Hm,” Sebastian mused. “It would be upsetting to see someone you have feelings for grow close to someone else. Although, I hadn’t noticed them much. I suppose they do seem to have some things in common that they can discuss, but I wouldn’t go as far to say there was anything more than a mutual understanding between them.”

“Right?” Hawke said. “I’m probably just making a mountain out of nothing, or whatever. Maker, I feel so dumb! Just yesterday I was telling Bethy that I would be happy for him if he found someone else. What if he does find someone? What if it’s Orana?”

“I doubt-- well, I can see why you would be worried,” he conceded. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Hawke. But it does sound more and more like you want to tell him about your feelings. It would be the only possible way to prevent this fear from becoming a reality.”

Hawke went quiet, struggling to articulate why that felt so wrong. “I just… I lost Anders. We weren’t really friends before we started seeing each other, but it still hurt to lose those parts of the relationship. Fen and I are friends, really good ones. To lose that… It would be like losing family, Seb.”

“You fear losing people,” Sebastian noticed. “You’ve felt it with your family, with your partner, with your friends. Hawke, I don’t wish to poke a sore wound, but is this perhaps connected to your father’s passing?”

“When did you become a therapist?” she muttered pathetically. He smiled.

“Perhaps your fear is more that you will relive the grief of losing your father, so you resist ending an unhealthy relationship or taking a friendship down a different path or feeling comfortable letting your siblings branch away in adulthood.”

“Gross!” Hawke cried. “I hate it! It’s so on the nose!”

He laughed. “Feelings often are. But you won’t ever relive that grief. Each loss is different, if similar. By holding on so tightly, you are only, at best, delaying grief. Not avoiding it.”  
She groaned. “Why do things have to change?”

“Everything changes, it’s what it means to be alive, Hawke,” he said comfortingly. He paused for a long moment, hesitant, then added, “Hawke. As your friend, I’d like to say this once. I think what you and Fenris have is special. I’ve never seen anything quite like the comfort and understanding you two share so naturally. All relationships take work, but if any one is worth it, I think this is it. Perhaps I am biased, as I care deeply for you both and want to see you happy, but I think you two are damned fools to continue letting this slip through your fingers.”

Hawke couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you pray to the Maker with that mouth?”

“Hawke,” he said in mock annoyance.

“No, no, I get it. Or, I hear it. I’ll...I’ll think about it more. Unless Orana swoops in and snags him first.”

“I sincerely doubt that will happen,” Sebastian laughed.

They rejoined the group to watch the remainder of the movie. The movie room was set up not with chairs per se, but rather rows of thick cushions and pillows and blankets that went down in rows towards the screen. Hawke curled up between Isabela, Bethany, and Merrill, throwing back popcorn and wine and laughing unrestrained at the on-screen antics. 

She tried to spend the rest of the day in the present, spending time with her friends. Fenris joined the movie moments after she did, and remained with the group. She tried not to fixate nor to ignore him as they moved on to play games, drink more, go for a swim in the lake, then crash back in the movie room to watch an over-the-top action film. 

Fenris disappeared near dinner to help cook, and Hawke refused to look at that too hard. He loved cooking, she reminded herself. 

~~

After dinner, once everyone had gone to bed for the night, Hawke remained outside on the porch. It wasn’t too cold, yet, so she stayed out there with photo albums and a bottle of wine. She couldn’t sleep, and after an hour of trying she’d given up for now. She’d be thirty in a few hours. She flipped through the pictures, staring back at a different world, a different Marian.  
She wasn’t even really Marian anymore, was she? She was Hawke now, to practically everyone in her life. She wasn’t the gangly kid trying to help her mother take care of two kids through immense loss. She wasn’t the ragged young woman, drinking and fighting and trying to take care of her family through more loss. She was a hero, a business owner, a champion. She had friends who loved her, a family who was still connected, if changed. 

“You’re still awake?” came that familiar voice.

“Mm-hmm,” Hawke mused, drinking from her bottle. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” Fenris said. Hawke reached out with her foot to push out the chair beside her. 

“Join me! Insomnia club.”

He moved quietly to take the offered seat. “You’re reminiscing?” 

“Do you ever?” she asked. “I know your past wasn’t pretty, but do you ever think it was easier, in ways? When I had nothing, I focused on what I did have. Now I focus on what I don’t. Maybe I’m just a spoiled brat.”

“I don’t think anyone would call you that,” Fenris said. Hawke offered the bottle, and he accepted it long enough to take a drink. “I do. Think it was easier. My ex made all the decisions, paid for everything. Before that, it was foster systems and survival. I never thought twice about being happy. I was only ever running. Now I’ve stopped running, and it’s all caught up with me.”

“Right?” she said, looking at him. “It hits you as soon as you’re safe, and you finally realize how fucked up things were. And you feel worse now that things are good, but it’s only because you’ve got this backlog of bad to get through. Like a weird emotional adrenaline.”

He nodded. “It’s easier now than when I first came to Kirkwall, but I saw enemies everywhere back then. I thought about going back multiple times a day. I felt like I was going insane. It passed, finally. Now it just feels...calm.”

Hawke looked at him, the way the moonlight and the outdoor light lit his face. “You deserve calm, if that’s what you want. I’m really happy for you, Fen. And proud. I can’t imagine how hard it was to trust us and make new friends and start a whole career in a new city.”

He laughed. “Hawke, you did nearly the same.”

“Oh,” she said, then she joined him in laughter. “It’s never as impressive when it’s yourself!”  
“It isn’t,” he agreed. They were quiet for a moment, trading the bottle for swigs of wine, before he said, “I’m sorry if I’ve been distant this weekend. I’ve just been lost in thought, taking walks. Your mother said something last night that stuck with me.”

“What’d she say?” Hawke asked. Surely nothing offensive?

“She just talked a bit about your father and their relationship.”

Hawke shook her head. “The lottery. They won the lottery with meeting each other. I know most kids grow up thinking their parents are soulmates or something, but I’m about to be thirty and I still feel that way. You can still see it in her eyes when she talks about him or sees a picture. It’s like she’s just as in love as on their wedding day. They were like that every day, even on the bad ones.”

“They had something special,” he said. “They still do. You have a good family, Hawke.”

“I know,” she said with a smile. 

“I spent some time with Carver this afternoon,” he said. So that was where he was! “He really looks up to you. I thought you’d like to know. He worries, too, but he cares.”

Hawke sighed. “I love Carver so much. I know he thinks I’m going to end up just like Dad. Anders used to say it, too. Ironically, that I was giving too much of myself away. That I’d get myself killed one way or another. That was his reason for breaking up that first time - couldn’t watch me wither away like my dad. Carver always resented Dad the most for not taking care of himself. Ma almost acts like she doesn’t mind.”

Fenris shook his head. “I can understand your mother. Someone like that… Nothing worth having comes without its risks. If you want the kind of connection your parents had, then you have to accept the person at the other end exactly as they are and exactly as they will be.”

Hawke sighed dramatically, head rolling lazily over to look at Fenris. He looked back, bemused. “You’re just always so dreamy and wise, Fen. How has someone not swept you off yet?”

He chuckled and said nothing, not that she really expected an answer.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he said instead. “It’s been...nice.”

She remembered the vision of him and Orana and felt something sour form at the base of her throat. And her traitor mouth could not resist letting it out.

“Yeah, no problem.” She said, in a laughing way, “I saw you and Orana are getting close.”

“What?”

“Uh, Orana?” she said. “I, uh, saw you guys on the balcony. Looked kinda… Maybe I read into it?”

“You did. She...asked. But I said no.”

Her heart lightened in an instant, though her expression conveyed sympathy. “Oh, really? Makes sense, to be honest. I love you both, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think you’d mesh quite right. In the long term. Just not compatible.”

She cleared her throat, willing herself not to blush. Maker, when had she turned back into a teenager?

Maker, when had she stopped being one in the first place?

“Mm-hmm,” was all Fenris contributed.

“So...Do you have any exciting projects coming up?” she asked. Fenris nodded, softly falling into conversation about some recordings he was looking forward to. She nodded along, smiling and trying to hide just how much she wanted to smile.

She could feel the window closing on her chance with Fenris. If there was any chance. He was only getting more comfortable, more relaxed, more damned charming each day. And she was only getting older, and weirder, and more hopeless. 

She wasn’t ready. She still wasn’t ready. But was she ready to lose out entirely? To watch him fall for someone else and not even have tried? Could she forgive herself if she let that happen because she was scared?

If this weekend had taught her anything, it was that the answer to all of those questions was a firm, tragic, “No”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to formally apologize to Orana, who is great but gets, like, no lines. It's not her, it's me.


	11. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which not a lot happens.

If he had taken the time to write it all down, Fenris’s idea of what the Champion of Kirkwall would be like lived in stark contrast to the reality.

In the weeks he’d been in Kirkwall, he’s heard plenty of her tales. The last six months or so had been quiet, but the city remembered each of her exploits, as though the city itself shook the day her feet stepped off some Fereldan refugee ship. 

She was brave and strong, defiant and uncontrollable, a danger and a protector. She was wild, all her friends were wild. She shone like a phoenix, like a wildfire burning away dead matter. 

He’d expected a woman burned, someone scorched and charred and darkened from her chaotic heroics. He’d expected to encounter a wildfire woman, someone as ever-changing as the winds and just as unpredictable as the disasters she was compared to. He’d expected someone dangerous and powerful. He had a bad history with that type of person.

He’d walked into that bar guarded as he’d ever been. He remembered meeting Danarius, remembered hearing stories about him, too. How charismatic he was. The champion, people claimed, was charismatic too. Danarius had been dark in his charisma, and the picture these stories painted of the champion seemed all too similar. And so Fenris was prepared to keep his head down, work, be as invisible as possible, and find another job as quickly as possible. If the champion showed the slightest bit of curiosity, he’d bolt. Better to starve than to be a pet again.

And then he met Hawke. Blue eyes that brightened like the sky after a vicious storm. That scar across her nose that twitched with her many vibrant expressions. Her laughter, ever-present, resounding through each room. She smiled, and the clouds parted.

He’d expected a wildfire, but Hawke was more a mountain. Steady and stubborn, nurturing. He had expected charisma and danger. Instead he found a woman unsure of how to behave around him, a newcomer, yet was wildly alluring to all who knew her. She was unaware of the fierce loyalty she attracted, perhaps because her loyalty was all the more fierce. 

And to find this magnetic, immovable woman whom the city thought a danger and a hero bemoan a broken heart and an endless game of cat-and-mouse with some no-name loser, well. Fenris was certain it had to be fake. But it wasn’t. Hawke was real and raw. She could hide nothing, and who was to say if she even tried. 

As the seasons shifted, she grew more comfortable with him. She carved out a space in her world, shaped to the person he was. Never asked him to change, never begrudged their differences. She looked at him and smiled and parted the clouds and said, “Good morning Fen!” even though it was 7pm.

He understood the loyalty. He felt it first when he overheard someone criticize her. The heat in his blood, but he quelled it and didn’t react. They didn’t know Hawke, didn’t know what she had endured. Fenris did not know all that she had endured. Her every accomplishment and trial she belittled and brushed away, like kicking an ice cube under a fridge. She couldn’t hide the emotions that would flash across her face, reflected in those sky eyes and that scar, but she didn’t talk about it. 

Fenris understood.

She carved out a space for him, and it felt less like an enclosure than it did a shield. He began to feel safe, despite his best efforts. He began to change, to relax into a person he didn’t know. And each day, Hawke carved away at the space she’d made to leave room for this new person. And each day, she greeted the Fenris before her with the same, unquestioning smile. She looked at him as though each day she spent in his company was a gift, something special wrapped just for her, and yet without possession or demand. 

Fenris understood. But that didn’t make him special. She still had Anders. 

Anders, whom Fenris was certain to be the single most unintelligent person in all of the world. Anders, who did and didn’t want Hawke. Anders, who never listened to her or called when he promised or meant what he said. Anders, whom Fenris had never seen nor spoken to, yet whom he hated with a deep and envious passion.

Fenris had no illusions; he’d developed feelings for Hawke. She made him feel safe. It made sense, he told himself. She was unavailable, both emotionally and in terms of status. That made it safe to carry those feelings - they could never be acted on. 

Things changed the day Anders stormed into the Hanged Man. When Hawke came back inside, soaking wet, when she fell into her friends’ arms and sobbed, the air smelt of rain, stale beer, and release. It was different than the times he’d seen her express pain and regret relating to him. Hawke was moving on. And Fenris was there, the next morning despite his mind berating his motives. Feeling caught by Varric, the moment in the wine cellar, trying to tell Hawke that there were others out there that wanted her, others who would never forget just how valuable she was like Anders had. 

But Hawke didn’t notice, or she rejected him. Fenris wanted to believe the former, his berating mind the latter, and his sense of logic again the former. Hawke was remarkably obtuse. She didn’t see herself as the rest of the world did. To the city, she was a hero and a disaster in one. To herself, she was a poor Fereldan refugee with nothing to offer. 

It was at her birthday weekend that he first spoke of it. They had all driven from the Amell estate to the little patchy beach nearby to light a fire, swim, roast smores, and the like. Varric brought a guitar, and Isabella sang a raunchy tune. 

It was warm enough for swimming, though Fenris preferred to hang back as the others went for a final dip. He watched his friends, this new family he’d joined. Hawke’s little sister, Bethany, had convinced her brother to play chicken. She sat on his shoulders, attempting to push Merrill off of Donnic’s shoulders. Aveline referred the match with her usual severity. Hawke and Sebastian were racing, for no apparent reason, while Varric cheered them on. 

Isabella left the water early to sit beside Fenris on the beach. 

“How are you doing, Fenris?” she asked. “A lot of people for you this weekend.”

“I’m fine,” he said, and he meant it. The nice thing about this energetic group was that they never balked at him falling back to the sidelines to catch his breath. When he was ready, he was welcomed into the chaos, but when he was tired, he was allowed a peaceful exit. He’d learned to navigate this little dance, and so the weekend was easy-going thus far. 

Isabella sighed contentedly and drew up her knees. “You know, we’ve all got bets on you and Hawke.”

“Bets?”

“On when you’ll get together, who will initiate, all that shit,” she said. “I’ve got my money on you being the one, so I need to know - when are you going to make a move? Any move?”

He snorted. “I don’t know that I will.”

She nearly recoiled in exaggerated surprise. “You’re not going to deny it? Play all coy with me like you’re not desperately in love with her?”

He shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? That’s why I can’t make a move. I’ve tried telling her before. She isn’t interested.”

“You absolutely haven’t,” she said. When he objected, she continued, “Have you told her ‘Hawke, I’m madly in love with you. Now let’s get upstairs and bang’?”

“No,” he said. “You’d hardly call them hints, though. And she laughs it all off. She must notice, and she’s rejecting me in little ways. I won’t push it.”

Isabela shifted to face him. “You’re insane! Hawke is the most unaware, stubborn, block-headed woman that’s ever walked this earth! I guarantee she hasn’t caught onto anything! Besides, I’m certain she’s just as into you. And in that case, she’ll hear those little hints and think she’s just reading into it. Believe me, I know how Hawke’s romantic brain works. It’s pathetic and endearing.”

Fenris continued watching the ocean. Bethany had unseated Merrill, inciting a rematch. Hawke had bested Sebastian in their race and was currently sabotaging the twins’ second victory. Her hair was plastered to her face, and he could hear her laugh from here as though she were right beside him. He remembered what her mother had told him about her smile. 

“I don’t know that I can tell her,” he said. A moment of raw, unanticipated honesty.

Isabela, for all her jokes and prodding, took it with her usual grace. “Write it down, then.”

She stood, brushed sand off herself, then ran for the water screaming her support of the twins. 

They drove back to the estate within the next hour. Fenris, now showered and wearing his nightclothes, sat at the desk in the room he was using. There were writing supplies and sheets of stationary tucked neatly into the desk. The estate was aptly named.

He began to write. It wasn’t his forte, but he told himself he was just practicing. This was better than speaking. He could think it through, change his wording, not worry about interruption or being misheard. He drew lines through paragraphs, scratched through entire pages, tried again and again until he relented for bed. The next morning, he rose early to resume his work. 

None of the words were right. What had he been thinking? He scoured his notes to find something, anything that was even close to what he wanted to say and found nothing.

He couldn’t lose any more time. It was nearly breakfast, and he would lose his nerve if he had to re-start this later. And he was already out of parchment.

He took the pen to parchment, making the final edits that he hoped might somehow convey the complex miasma of feelings he held for Hawke. And finally, finally, he was something he could call “done”.

But today was Hawke’s birthday, and he wasn’t going to take any of this occasion from her. So he sealed it in an envelope, found a stamp, then took it to Orana to ask for it to be included with the mail. With that done, Fenris put it from his mind and focused his energy on enjoying this last day with his friends.

~~

The week after her birthday, she got a strange letter. Hawke hated checking the mail, and so it was lucky that her fancy apartment complex had the mail thrown into each apartment’s mail slot through the door. Elsewise she might not have seen it for a week or two.

In neat, familiar handwriting was her name and address on the envelope. The return was Fenris’s. 

Anxiety welled in her throat. Why had he mailed her something? What was so terrible he didn’t just talk to her? What was wrong?

She tore open the letter, nearly ripping the contents as she pulled out several pieces of stationary. It was a familiar design, but she didn’t waste time on it. Standing just inside her door, barely closing it behind her, she read Fenris’s letter.

There were blocks of text, each heavily scratched out with bricks of heavy-handed ink. There were pages of it, completely illegible and making her wonder what had possessed Fenris. Was this a joke? It didn’t really match his humor.

Then, she found it. The only words not marked out. At the end, he had signed it simply, “Fen”, but farther up that last page, amidst the mess of scrawled out words, was a single phrase.

Hawke, I’m in love with you.

It said something about Hawke that it was not his actual words, but seeing that he signed it “Fen” that pushed her over the edge into tears. She tried not to cry, then failed miserably across the next few moments. She recognized the stationary now - Amell. Had he written this over the weekend? 

It didn’t matter.

Where are you, she texted to him. Should she call him? Was it okay to call him? Maker, she was remarkably nervous for no reason. 

His reply came in mere seconds. Home. Is everything alright Hawke?

What did she say? She didn’t think about it as she stood for the door. I ghot the letter omw

She left the typo. She didn’t care. He would understand.

It was a twenty minute drive to his apartment from hers. He didn’t respond to her text. She gripped the steering wheel, pouring all of her anxieties into it. Why hadn’t he responded? Was there really a reason for him to? Did he regret the letter already? Had he written it drunk, or something? That would explain all the blacked out pages. Was it a joke or something? No, none of her friends were nearly that cruel. 

He still hadn’t texted when she reached his place. She bounded up the stairs, forgetting all over how much she’d be gasping at the top. Any delusions about catching her breath were gone when she reached the top just as he opened the door.

She paused and held onto the railing, catching her breath anyway. He stood in the doorway, the sunset casting light onto his back. His hair was a little mused. He seemed to be growing it out lately. His brow was furrowed, and he was perfectly tense and still. 

“Fen,” she gasped. “It was real, right? The letter? Not a joke or something you regret or?”

He hardly moved to speak. “It is real.”

She laughed in relief, finally catching up to herself. 

“You’ve been crying,” he noticed.

She was smiling now. “Yeah, of course I am! I--”

She had strode forward to hug him and nearly did before she caught herself. She stepped back. 

“I’m not made of glass,” Fenris said, on edge.

It was the closest thing to an invitation he seemed capable of. Hawke all but leapt forward to envelope him in a hug, momentum pushing them a few steps into his apartment. 

“Hawke--” He tried to speak as she pulled away just enough to kiss him. She felt the butterflies fill her chest and throat, like little sparks of light and warmth just long enough before she realized.

She pulled away suddenly. “Oh, Fen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. What were you saying?”

He blinked at her. “No, I… You answered my question.”

And it was his turn to lean in to kiss her. They stayed there for just a moment as his body relaxed. When they pulled away, Hawke buried her face in the space between his neck and shoulder. He was wearing another turtleneck, and it was freshly washed. She breathed in the smell of his detergent. 

“Hawke…” His voice trailed off, like he didn’t really have anything to say. She pulled back to look at him, but stayed as close as she could. All these months, even from before she had any idea or inkling of her feelings, all this time she’d wanted to hug him or just express any affection, she wasn’t ready to pull away yet. She saw him looking off, and glanced back to see the open door. Shifting, she used one foot to kick the door closed before turning her attention back to him. This time, he was the one to press his head to her shoulder. She carded her fingers through his hair, humming a song she barely recalled. It was something her father used to sing, when she would catch him dancing late at night in the kitchen with her mother.

And it was fitting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote not one, not two, but three different instances of Hawke or Fenris confessing on the way to this one. Originally it was going to happen at the dinner post Wicked Grace realization, then the night at the estate when they were talking outside, and finally this. None of the others *felt* right. Dare I say they weren't...fitting?


	12. Good Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter!

When Hawke went home that night, disheveled and worn, she stood inside the door for a long moment. Closed it slowly. Locked it. Leaned forward to press her forehead against the cool surface. Deep, slow breath. A soft release in the pin-drop-silent apartment.

That...she hadn’t expected that. The letter, the confession, and now...what? 

They’d had dinner, worked together with some things Fenris had around to eat. It was maybe a little awkward as the two fumbled around one another, uncertain of how to act, how much to change. But it was nice, because it was them. 

She sighed and turned, sliding with her back against the door to fall with a thump on the floor. Her jacket slid off one shoulder, and she left it there.

Hawke...wasn’t quite thinking. Her life was so noisy, and she liked it that way most of the time. But then, at that moment, everything was quiet. Her mind had nothing to say, nothing to add in the dim light of her unlit apartment late at night. 

It felt...nice. The thoughts, the noise, began to return, but softer. Quietly filing through, gently passing by. She felt...at peace. Really at peace. Fenris had that effect on her. And now, to have that final unspoken barrier between them gone, well. It was nice.

Finally she pulled herself to her feet, shedding layers of clothes as she moved from door to bathroom to bedroom. When she was all changed and washed, she curled under her covers and remembered the warmth of Fenris’s apartment. That little dark wood table. Chairs pressed close. A deep, warm laugh.

Hawke loved her family. It was like a fire in her, something that pushed her forward, sprang her into action. She felt the same for her friends, for helping people. Her passion burned within her, but it left its marks. She felt like a phoenix at times, scorching away pieces of herself to expose new flesh, a new Hawke. It was necessary, and she was happy, and she loved the people in her life. But it hurt. 

Anders had made that worse. If she were a phoenix, he were a wildfire. They fed off one another, burning brighter still until they and those around them hurt. Were injured. She thought that was love, that it was something to build a life on. Death and rebirth. Destruction and pain. Passion and fury. 

But now. Fenris was cool, cold, chilling even. Sharp and controlled where she was wild and unmeasured. When she was with him, she didn’t feel quite so on fire. Their friendship was a salve to her ever-burning heart, and she wondered if this wasn’t what she needed.

When Hawke woke the next morning, she spent thirty minutes staring at her phone. She had her messages open, staring at the last one she’d sent Fenris.

Should she text him? He wasn’t much for it, but would it be okay now? 

She felt a little like a teenager again, uncertain and giddy with it. Holding her phone to her chest, she looked off towards the window. Light poured in around the curtain. She’d slept in a bit, it seemed.

She slid out of bed, idly running one hand through her hair. She knelt by the window, peeling back the curtain to peer outside.

Kirkwall lay out before her. It was a nice view, one that stretched over the city and the harbor. The sunlight bounced off distant waves and metal buildings. Hawke set her phone on its side on the window sill and took a picture.

She sent it with the message Good morning!!

~

Some distance away in a neat, darkly decorated apartment, Fenris heard his phone buzz on the table beside him. He sat beneath the loft at his desk, hair pulled back as he looked between the novel on his laptop’s screen and his notes. A new voiceover job, with a new author. They had their own line of books - romance novels. The author wanted a full voice cast, so he was just one character this time. Still, he liked to do his due diligence. This author was picky, and the pay was good. He wanted to get more work with her later on.

His phone broke his focus as he looked over. He flipped it face-up and saw a little message bubble on the lock screen. The icon for the sender was a black and white photo of a hawk. And then, the bubble grew to show a preview of a picture.

He picked up his phone, setting down his pen to unlock it. 

Good morning!! 

The photo she’d sent was clearly a view out a window, overlooking Kirkwall and its far harbor. In the window, he could see the phone’s reflection as well as Hawke’s. She had her chin resting on the window sill in the reflection, hair mused, sleep-marked face. Her bright eyes were lazily drawn to the phone.

He stared at it for a long moment. It felt like a little piece of proof, a reminder that yesterday had been real. It was...difficult to believe. That she had been there. That she had returned his feelings. The letter had weighed heavily on him since he wrote it, try as he might to forget it. 

There had been moments, plenty of them, early on in knowing Hawke when he was calmly certain she had some form of interest in him. But her oblivious nature, too-casual compliments, and Anders drama had dashed that certainty. 

But now… Now he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Good morning, Hawke.

He attached a photo he’d taken just that morning.

A photo of the sunrise this morning.

He had barely set the phone down before it buzzed again.

!!!!  
So beautiful!  
Makes me almost want to be a morning person  
Almost

He smiled and repeated her Almost.

She shot another message over.

Kinda cute that we had the same idea this morning  
#goals

He laughed at that, warm and light and comfortable. It felt good to laugh so often, so easily. It felt good to know someone who made it impossible not to laugh.

He didn’t have anything to add. He wasn’t good at texting, but he knew that not responding to someone’s message could be interpreted poorly. Hawke knew him, but still.

Seems we’re finally on the same page.

He saw the little bubble indicating she was typing, and he gave up pretending he might work. He took the phone with him to the kitchen to make himself another cup of tea.

Idk...think we’ve been on the same page for ages, just the wrong book.

He smiled.

Perhaps the wrong edition.

He poured water into the kettle and set it on the stove.

Can I see you today?

He stared down at the message.

Do you mean facetime or in person? He asked.

In person?

He felt something tighten in his chest, a familiar experience. 

I’m on my way to the coffee shop you like. I’ll bring our drinks to your place.

He dumped the kettle back out into the sink, checked that he hadn’t turned on the gas stove, then strode to the door. Shoes, coat, scarf, hat, keys, wallet, all there.

He checked his phone one last time before stepping out. Several heart emojis filled his screen, along with:

Get us some pastries!!

~~

Hawke would have given just about anything for a sense of fashion. She’d never cared before, not at any time or with any partner or interest. But Fenris was always so well put-together, even if he almost exclusively wore black. Something about it made her want to look nice.

But she was shit at it. She had basic clothes, most of which had seen many better years. She did have a thing for flannels - inherited from her father - but even those were beat up now. She realized with disgust that she needed to go shopping. She wondered if she ought to bring Isabela, Merrill, and Bethy along. They were all infinitely better than her at this, but shopping with them was...overwhelming.

Hawke gave up. She pulled out an old t-shirt and one of her more whole pairs of jeans.

Good enough, she thought with a shrug to her reflection. 

There was a soft knock at her door, and she forced herself to maintain a casual pace to the door.

She could do nothing about the grin when she opened the door. 

He smiled at her, holding a paper bag in one hand and a drink tray in the other. 

“Hello, Hawke.”

**Author's Note:**

> And so! It! Begins!


End file.
